Few days back, I was walking down the streets of my house, there a group of kids living in my neighborhood met me and asked for my Email id so that they can add me as a “friend” on Facebook. I was shocked as well as amazed on seeing the penetration of Facebook in our lives.
Facebook is quickly becoming a part and parcel of our lives. We simply just can’t live without it.Google on the other is world’s most familiar and widely acclaimed website of the World. It is a one stop solutions for all our needs. Today the website is more just a search engine, there are whole lot of features like Gmail, Buzz etc. So is Facebook is giving tough time to Google????
The following points will just simply illustrate this issue:
1. Strength in Numbers
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Facebook has far more unique visitors than Google. The website claims to have its base of those in the age group of 35+ years have increased to almost doubled in less than three months. The several factors have attributed to this trend. Some of the prominent ones are:
a. Highly controlled and interactive participation of people in Facebook. They can control their accounts and share their views and thoughts more freely than Google.
b. The people are interacting people only. They are connected to a human network where your thoughts and emotions have some worth.
c. Facebook has almost killed the concept of SEO. Today popularity of any website, person, blogs etc. is measured by the number of people liking it or following it on Facebook. This avenue is being explored by several Marketing companies.
d. Facebook has become a source of traffic for Google, almost 19% of all Google sessions come from Facebook. Facebook’s popularity has helped several search engines (Google specially) in bringing more traffic to their sites. Thus Facebook is actually helping Google to boost its share and is expected to surpass Google by 2013.
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2. Social Searching is better than Google search
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Slowly, but steadily the trend of Social Searching is gaining pace. Suppose, you want to have a review of the latest released movie, you simply just do the Social search to know the thoughts of others. Google searching is based on the Algorithmically designed bots which index information from those sources which have a large number of backlinks. The result you obtain is not accurate always. The social searching is far better than Google search in those cases or topics where the indexes are not updated by Google regularly. Facebook has given birth to new faces in which we can deliver or receive information.
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3. People like to spend more time on Facebook
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Facebook has been the World’s biggest time sinker. It is banned at workplaces and offices. According to survey, US surfers almost 10% of their web surfing time on Facebook. The failure of Google’s social networking service, Orkut will also prompt Google to have a tough time snatching visitors from Facebook. People want to chat, make friends online and do many more social activities on Facebook. They have an urge to know what’s happening in others lives. They want to share some of their experiences with their friends and family. People want to be admired or pampered by people.
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4. Facebook Slowly Eating into Google’s Profits
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Three years ago, Microsoft made a deal for 1.6% by paying 250 million dollars to have exclusive rights for advertising over the entire facebook.com. Today Google’s profit comes 99% from the ads and banners. So even if every Facebook owner performs as many searches as Google’s then the Facebook’s income from ads will surpass Google easily. The life line of any business is revenue. Facebook has more traffic and more time is spent by people here, so the revenue streams like applications will be targeted specifically for people and are “naturally social” and are better than Google’s revenue that is based on several factors.
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5. Google don’t have Social DNA
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There are several strategies that are taken by Google to become more interactive and social. While they were playing games with themselves, the Facebook found out several ways to mint money from its various advertising campaigns. The Google failed to realize that those techniques that worked two or five years ago will not necessarily work even today. Half of the Facebook community likes to play games and use applications that medium is used by Facebook and other companies to share and generate revenues. The power of Facebook advertisement doesn’t lie in the amount of games you play, but is in the “Like” button that is placed everywhere on the page that appeals to several marketing agencies.