A recent news item from weblogs.hitwise.com describes how Facebook had surpassed Google to become the most visited website in the US.
March 15, 2010
Facebook reached an important milestone for the week ending March 13, 2010 and surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website for the week. Facebook.com recently reached the #1 ranking on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th. The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame. Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week.
I have some thoughts on this. Perhaps this will all be “well duh” but here goes anyway.
First, this has been positioned as an “either / or” kind of thing. I don’t think Google, or at least the search paradigm in general, if not Google specifically, is going anywhere. It will be here for a long time to come – it’s simply too powerful. It’s incredible how different our lives are in 2010 compared to before such powerful search engines existed. But I’ll come back to that.
I would characterize this as a strong indication that we are heading along the path toward David Gelernter’s “lifestreaming” described in the mid-1990s: “…a time-ordered stream of documents that functions as a diary of your electronic life…”
Instead of going out and getting the information, the information comes to us. Facebook isn’t a complete transition to this lifestreaming model, but it’s closer. And Google, even with Wave and Buzz, certainly isn’t very effective at it (at least not yet).
Facebook is not the end of this road. It’s simply a step along the way. More and more, the tools and services we use are going to have to provide filtering and notification, bringing us the information we want, where it comes to us seamlessly, instead of us actively tracking it down.
The only way Direct TV can hang onto their customers is by locing them into a “fresh contract” each time they call in to their non-existing customer service people who deem to be useless by knowing nothing!! I had Direct TV for almost 7 years and about a year ago they said I needed a new receiver because mine was supposedly “obsolete”. I told them there was nothing wrong with it but they insisted they would replace my old one at “NO CHARGE WHATSOEVER”. Never believe them because about two weeks later a bill for $75 came in the mail. I called them and they said not to pay it that it was a mistake. SO that was that—-or so I thought. About a couple of months ago I sent them an e-mail and said I wanted the lower rates they were offering new victims but noone ever contacted me so I got in touch with Comcast and they gave me a great ONE YEAR deal for a fantastic price -I pay $30 more a month for TV, High Speed internet and my house phone with unlimited long distance calls than I paid for just ONE MONTH of Direct TV–just for TV service which wasn’t that great to begin with! Well, now they are charging me an $80 early cancellation fee for the “free new receiver” they insisted I have in January last year. Well, they have a fight on their hands because I will be turning this over to our consumer advocate on the local TV stations and we’ll see who eats the $80 “early cancellation fee” after almost 7 years of being robbed by Direct TV. Thank you for listening and don’t ever buy Direct TV…their customer service sucks as well as their service!