Facebook becomes the top web-referral than Google : Paradigm is Shifting

by deep on February 15th, 2010

According to Web measurement firm Compete Inc., Facebook has turned out to be the top web-referral site than search-engine giant Google to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites. The report continues to show that Facebook is not far behind Google in other categories. For example, Google accounted for 21.3 percent of referrals to sites catering to movie fans, but Facebook was second with 12.4 percent. And in a video category, Google – which owns YouTube – was first with 22.9 percent, but Facebook was next at 12.7 percent.

This shifting paradigm clearly demonstrates the popularity of social networking sites and the importance of social media optimization in the Internet. This change is justifiable when we look into the growth of the social networking sites. In past, people did not have anything like Internet profile, people would have to depend upon the Google’s search engine to find information and search news. But the technology has advanced since the first search engine.

First came the open and free email clients allowing users to create their own personalized email box. This must be the first event which showed the importance of communication over the internet, followed by chat clients. These were not still so much a threat to Google. If people found anything interesting in the Internet, they could favorite them or share through mails. The mail sharing feature is still available and used when you need to share the links with a particular person.

Then came the rise of RSS feeds which allowed the content in the internet to be legally and freely distributed to different channels. This way, now people had to spend less time searching for the news, it would arrive to the mail box. This must be the first indication to Google which made them certain that Feeds would soon drag the search engine down. Hence it was quickly acquired by Google on 2007.

But Google wasn’t quick enough to acquire facebook or twitter. Both of these companies were strong and intelligent enough to understand the power of their service. The eco-system has now changed, when people log in to the Internet, everyone has their own place to go at, Facebook profile and twitter profile, before they even think of going to Google. This personalized space has become one of the most tempting space for companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook. This is why many businesses have shown their interest over the personal space, attacking them with different names. As a result, Facebook and Google are always in the news for violating the privacy issues.

There is no doubt that facebook and twitter is the future towards content distribution and marketing platform. The only thing that is remaining is a better approach to reach out to people’s space with out interfering their privacy. Remember that when Television and Radios were first available to people, businesses thought they could push their message to the people. But a balanced and appropriate approach was reached with mix of entertainment, news and advertisement.

As companies understand the balance between technology, business and society, we will be seeing more fruitful innovations. Today, we are still in the stage of experimentation and slowly understanding what works and what doesn’t.

Image Source : jpmedia, expeditusmedia

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