The Implications Of Consumers Spending More Time With Facebook Than Google

A summary by Hope Hopkins | See all summaries by Hope Hopkins

Facebook has succeeded where Google has not in creating a single, cohesive experience that gives today's consumers what they want and therefore has earned the attentions and dollars of marketing departments. However marketers take note-this doesn't mean it's time to throw the AdWords budget in the bin-Google still has significant and engaged traffic.

Posted by Forrester Research Blogs on September 10th, 2010 | Original Post »

I'm always surprised when there's a great deal of news buzz over something everyone knew was going to happen. When I lived in Milwaukee, we'd joke about the first snowfall of the year and the sorry assignment given the lowliest reporter to stand on a giant pile of municipal salt to report on the efforts to clean the streets. We all know it snowed, we can see the snowplows–what's newsworthy about this, exactly?

That's the way I felt reading all the headlines about comScore's report that time spent with Facebook exceeded Google in August. Any informed person knew the trends and expected this to happen, so whether Google or Facebook is No. 1 is less interesting to me than what the trend really means. This week's news is not as immediately dire for Google nor as immediately beneficial for Facebook as the headlines would imply. That said, the trends do highlight the fact that Facebook has succeeded where Google has not in creating a single, cohesive experience that gives today's consumers what they want.

When people hear the Google name, the first thing that comes to mind is the search engine which, of course, is not a place where people spend a lot of time–users search and leave quickly. But Google has many popular "sticky" sites, such as YouTube and Gmail, and despite the news, these sites are not losing attention. In fact, Google isn't shrinking while Facebook is growing, it's just that Google isn't growing as fast as Facebook.

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One Response to “The Implications Of Consumers Spending More Time With Facebook Than Google”

  1. [...] Facebook, by the way, has become so enmeshed in peoples’ everyday lives that they are addicted. Facebook is the new “front end” of user experiences, partially displacing search in the …. [...]

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