DreamGrow Social Media

HUGE: Google Will Go For Social Media With GMail

Google is becoming irrelevant. Facebook is where people send increasing amounts of their online time. As we have pointed out earlier the main thing that is working for Google is search. Their social pushes with Orkut and Google Wave haven’t had much success.

Facebook on the other hand is having a search component missing from internet domination. Facebook’s search sucks. It is really really bad even finding their own pages and giving relevant results to users. This could be solved with Bing. Facebook’s part owner Microsoft could lend its declining to be used as a search engine inside the social network.

The Facebook’s interface update last week hints at this possibility as the search box was promoted to the prominent position in site’s header. Now Facebook has a lot going on for them and snatching search from Google doesn’t seem really far fetched. With its user-base over 400 million and growing at a rate almost 20 million a month Facebook is the biggest threat Google has ever faced.

Now Google is throwing it all in. Trying to convert GMail with its 150 million users to a social site seem to be their last countermeasure against Facebook. As they can’t break the user experience for the whole user-base the changes couldn’t be too great. The other obstacle, Mashsble points out, is that you probably have thousands of email addresses in GMail and only fraction of those are people you would like to share your status updates with.

So, we have to wait and see what the coming week reveals. Tuesday is the day if Mashable is correct. I have to admit that I am a bit skeptical and I think that Google’s chances against Facebook are really slim.

Youtube search taking up 28% of all Google searches

A year ago, comScore reported that YouTube has grown to be the second largest search engine on the internet, topped only by Google itself.

Today, comScore’s 2009 US Search Rankings Report, published last week, reports that YouTube searches grew by 35% in 2009, reaching to more than 3.9 billion search queries.

YouTube had 50% more searches than Yahoo web search and 180% more searches than Bing. What we can see clearly here, is that people are getting used to finding information in the form of a video. The same tendency has also shown on websites – people are more likely to watch a short video, rather than read the text next to the video, saying the same thing.

The growing importance of Youtube search (and video search in general) isn’t showing any signs of slowing down, but rather it will grow even more in 2010. So keep an eye on Youtube and maybe consider picking up a camera yourself.

Facebook More Visited Than Google

Everything social is what people want to do most. Currently the top site is still Google but it will pass. People love to talk more than search. If we look at the top sites in US for 2009 then we see that four of them are used for communicating with others (Yahoo Mail, Facebook, MySpace and Live Mail). I believe that this social chatter is fundamental human need and won’t go away any time soon.

As we pointed out in our 22 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2010, people will use more social networks’ messaging instead of regular email and IM. This will boost the visits to the social sites and decrease the usage of web mail. This all leads to Facebook becoming the most visited site in the world some time in 2010.

Experian Hitwise US tweeted that:

Facebook was the most visited site in the US on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. 1st time the site has been the #1 visited US site ever. — Hitwise_US

Search Engine Land has a Hitwise graph for the data running up to the Christmas.

Experian Hitwise UK shared their data:

Facebook was the #1 US website this Xmas. Not quite there in the UK yet – maybe next year… — Hitwise_UK

I think there are two factors holding back total domination of Facebook. Lack of news and god-awful search. If Facebook would integrate Bing search to its platform then Google would have a lot to worry about.

Facebook getting ahead of Google before 2010?

We have seen the emergence of Facebook for a long time now, and with every social media site talking daily about the enormous success of it, it almost starts to get worn out….almost. Looking at the latest graphs, I can’t stop but feel amazed. Facebook will soon have more visits to its homepage than Google itself! The yearly amount of its visits has grown by 342%, compared to Google’s 42%.

On september 2008, Facebook started out with 0.5 Billion pageviews – a year later today, it’s 2.3 Billion pageviews a month! When looking at the growthchart, I can’t stop but feel amazed – will the only thing stepping in Facebook’s way be the actual number of people in the world with internet connection?

In one way, Facebook’s growth is understandable. People want to communicate and with all your neighbours and even the milkman being on Facebook, it’s natural that Facebook is where they’ll go. 500 Million users next year is a fact seems pretty certain. What about a billion? Can Facebook handle that? Is it even possible? Maybe, cause when looking at the graphs, it seems funnily realistic.

Remember when your company’s homepage on the web was important? Although still important, the times are changing now – Facebook is where you’ll want to be. Getting on the bandwagon early in the game (and Facebook themselves think 2009 is just the start), will get you some big advantages over your competitors in the long run.

Will this be the new Google in 2011?

Google Sidewiki you can comment all web

Google is revolitionizing again. What if everyone, from a local expert to a renowned doctor, had an easy way of sharing their insights with you about any page on the web? What if you could add your own insights for others who are passing through? Now you can. Today, were launching Google Sidewiki, which allows you to contribute helpful information next to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page. via Official Google Blog: Help and learn from others as you browse the web: Google Sidewiki.

Google Sidewiki is really big thing. If it gains traction it will change a lot how social media and user feedback works.

Some see danger: Google is trying to take interactivity away from the source and centralize it. This isn’t like Disqus, which enables me to add comment functionality on my blog. It takes comments away from my blog and puts them on Google. That sets up Google in channel conflict vs me. It robs my site of much of its value.

An interview with Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt

Few would dispute that Google sits at the center of the Internet. As the leader in search, Google is now the Internet’s premier brand and the planet’s most potent free service. Managing that commanding position falls largely to seasoned technology executive Eric Schmidt, who in 2001 was tapped for the CEO post by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. via An interview with Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt – McKinsey Quarterly – Strategy – Innovation .