A flash in the pan?
It happened this Wednesday: Facebook finally took the top spot globally according to alexa.com.
Of course, by the time I write this blog, Google is back up there but what helped Facebook outpace a search engine? How long before youTube overtakes Google?
Over course, it helps to understand what the top ten sites are: we have 4 web search engines up there, but if you want to find something out quickly that wasn’t necessarily fixed published information, would you use a straight web search engine?
A great example is the use of the global village. Say I am heading out to Birmingham tomorrow, would I read a weather report or look at the tweets or Facebook reports from friends talking about the commute or school run? If they haven’t done that, a quick FB message is much more likely to get a response than a txt or email.
Of course the beauty of Twitter is the tweets can be fully public where-as Facebook is still working on that one (if I publish something, who is consuming it today?)
For me, that’s the reason Facebook and Twitter sit in the same company as Google, Yahoo, Windows Live and of course, Baidu. QQ is a similarly marketed “life portal” as Facebook within China (numbers count). Google is making headway with Google+ though it is much easier to get a decent smart phone/tablet app for Facebook than Google+ today. Maybe, today that’s the point – anywhere, anyhow, any time access.
But, what of youTube?
Smart phones, tablets, computers and newer TVs can all consume youTube. How long before the battle stops being between search engine and social networks but between web and TV?
Posted: February 3rd, 2013 under Social Networks, Work.