Facebook Popularity Rivals Google

Facebook Popularity Rivals Google

According to Hitwise and Comscore, 2 internet traffic analysis sites, Facebook will push past Google this year to become the most popular web site in terms of traffic. The social media king founded by Mark Zukerberg currently has over half a billion users of its service. While this translates into a lot of traffic and a lot of revenue (which some analysts estimate at about one billion), because the company is still private, the actual profits are still a little unclear.

Google is clearly still on top when it comes to the financial numbers with about twenty four billion in sales for 2010. Like Google, Facebook relies on advertising revenue to make money, and there has been a bit of negative press over the last year regarding just how much of your personal information is shared with advertisers.

The numbers used in scoring are somewhat open to interpretation, however, as the two web site giants are clearly used in distinctly different ways. Users go to Google, search for a site, and then go to it. In contrast, a user logs on to Facebook and then browses through pages of pictures and information and friends over a much more extended period of time. As such, just looking at pages views for example would not necessarily form an accurate picture of popularity.