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In your Face(book) Google!

One useful metric for gauging the success of an online venture is the number of people who visit your website.

For quite some time, the crown for "most popular" rested on Yahoo's head but then came Google.

Once Google stole Yahoo's crown, it looked as if nobody could ever challenge the search giant's hold on this most prized of prizes.

Until this week that is.

For all its might, presence and power, Google has been dethroned and is now no longer the most popular website on the internet.

So who is?

Well the title of today's column probably gave you a clue didn't it?

Yes, FaceBook has become the internet's most popular website, squeezing Google out of first place for the first time, at least in the USA.

I bet that's come as a bit of a surprise to many industry observers who thought that search was, and always would be, king.

It seems that there are now more of us who are just interested in what other people are doing than in locating information or other forms of entertainment online.

A long long time ago I agreed with those who said that user-generated content was a powerful force online. It seems that the events of this week have finally proven that to be the truth.

So what can we make of this gobsmacking defeat for Google?

Well, it would appear that the internet has become a medium that is all about the "me" inside all of us.

The reason that FaceBook has become number one is because people want to tell the world about themselves and enjoy a little bit of fame/notoriety. This is particularly true amongst the youth of today.

It's kind of sad that the most powerful tool ever created by the scientific/academic community for the advancement of knowledge and sharing of information has become a global poster-board for all those who just want to be noticed by others.

This shift towards "the 'me' inside all of us" continues with services such as Twitter and, perhaps to a lesser degree, YouTube.

Apparently, the average US user spends over six hours a week either updating their own information or browsing that which other people have uploaded to the site.

Given that social networking is more popular amongst younger people, one can't help but wonder whether all this "virtual befriending" is a good or a bad thing.

We've all read the stories of young FaceBookers who've been groomed for sexual contact by older (usually male) users who effectively create a false identity for the sole intent of predating the vulnerable. That's clearly a bad thing.

We've also read about teenagers who effectively create a second persona online by way of their FaceBook pages, sometimes engaging in the kind of risky or illegal activity that they'd never dream of in "the real world".

How well adjusted are those who measure their own worth by the number of "friends" they have on FaceBook rather than by the number of actual friends they have in "the real world"?

Is internet addiction (especially by way of social networking) likely to become as much of a problem as alcohol or drug addiction?

It seems that, as a group, internet users have gradually shifted their focus from tracking down and gaining knowledge to tracking down and gaining friends.

The wonderful resource we call the internet has metamorphosed from the world's most comprehensive data library into the new CB radio.

Sad or glad?

Good or bad?

And, most importantly of all, where to from here?

Will our national broadband network simply see an even greater surge in people logging into FaceBook rather than actually creating export-earning online ventures?

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