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Facebook Surpasses Google For Users' Online Time
crimeandpunishment writes "When it comes to our time online, socializing beats searching. According to new data from researchers at comScore Inc., Facebook has moved ahead of Google for the first time in Web users' minutes. In August, people spent more than 41 million minutes on Facebook, compared to just under 40 million for all of Google's sites combined. Yahoo came in third, with 37.7 million minutes."
Well, duh. Now that there's Google Instant, you don't *have* to spend any time on google.
You'll have that sometimes...
Is that tiny edge that Facebook has over Google outside the margin of error? I don't doubt that Facebook use is growing faster than Google use, but has it exceeded the "noisy" range and clearly bested Google, or is this just a random spike during which someone happened to be paying attention?
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
Why did it take so long? I don't spend that much time on Facebook, but I know I spend more time than I do searching. I mean, how do you linger for any real length of time in Google? You search and look through the results. Sometimes you look through a few pages, maybe re-work the search a few times, but in the end most of the time spent is on that page you are searching for a link for. Unless this is counting gmail and things like that.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
I'd like to find the bastard who wrote Farmville and sue him for 'estrangement of affections'. It's quite incredible how much time my wife spends on the damn game.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
There is also a slight difference to why users are on the sites. I know a few people who only use Google to find facebook.
Then divorce her and replace her with a newer blowup doll.
Who the #%&$ still uses yahoo?
No surprise based on yesterday's story regarding the majority of users on Facebook.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/09/08/1621235/Narcissists-Insecure-People-Flock-To-Facebook
Post a bunch of stupid sh*t about myself, then read it over and over again...
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Google prides itself on wasting less of our time, while Facebook prides itself on wasting more of it.
I wanna see how many ads per minute each service gets from their users, and how much resources a minute is worth on both of them.
Then this milestone might even mean something. By itself, it doesn't.
I am completely surprised by Yahoo's stats. Either user-minutes is a garbage metric, or I am using the internets incorrectly.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
That is like 111+ years (if I calculated that right!)
Slashdot keeps on posting stupid stories like this, day in and day out, and I'm still here posting how stupid they are.
I ain't going nowhere. Suck that, facespace.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Toss on a pair of smelly overalls, the volunteer to "harvest her crops".
what book?
what what?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Replace "socializing" with "slacking off" in that very first sentence and everybody will go "like I didn't know".
this sig is useless
Am I the only person surprised to see Yahoo that high up on the list?
Considering Google just released Google Instant, a feature that reduces overall query time (and also just happens to increases overall ad impressions), I don't think "online time" is a particularly meaningful metric for relevance.
Its not really socializing if they are spending hours playing farmville or mafia wars. I think thats where most of the time goes. Although I will admit that I leave my facebook profile open when I leave for work, so I wonder if they count inactive uses or not.
beware of the robots....
I don't waste my time with social networks. So I don't follow the trends, it seems...
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
You now understand why women don't date gamers.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
No, plow her fields.
No, wait, trim her hedges?
Stroke her pet beaver?
Wait... what were we discussing again?
If facebook has 400 million users, and they spent a total of 40 million minutes in a month, that's only 0.1 minute per month for each user. I don't think you can do much more than log in once in 6 seconds. I read the article, and these numbers all appear to be bogus. Perhaps it is 40 * billion * minutes?
Does that include all the time that facebook users are browsing non-Facebook "facebook-enabled" sites?
Interestingly enough, it would appear that something happened to change my facebook's settings to "keep me logged in" without me telling it to.
Do we mow how many people were actually included in this survey and who they were? As somebody else has noted 40million minutes makes no sense at all. If it was a worldwide estimate it basically means that only an average of 1000 are on fb or google at any one time and I don't believe that for a second (or minute).
EVERYBODY's googled "Christina Hendricks" and clicked on "Images".
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I just have to click on some more cows first.
Just be a few more minutes.
If you can just wait.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Both are still plenty vulnerable (google less so, but still) to an upstart with marketing money and a decent business plan.
Facebook (when I last looked at it, more than a year ago) struck me as being a sort of internet masturbation. As soon as something more fulfilling comes along, it will fall by the wayside. I bet the typical teenager spends a lot more time wanking than screwing, but eventually gets laid often enough to reverse the situation.
Google, on the other hand, provides a few useful services. It's not sex, but it's not jerking around either.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Yahoo groups runs freecycle, Yahoo owns Flikr.
That's likely where lots of the user time comes from.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I thought it was because a real gamer would never have time to hit on anybody.
If you're spending much time on Google's site, either you haven't learned how to enter the right search terms, or you must be very bored.
And what the fuck is google?
Yours,
Escaped Convict #954256
If by "Socializing" you mean "investing time into building up a virtual farm/mafia/village/whatever". :P
I don't get it - why *should* searching occupy more time than socializing? I don't really understand the Google-Facebook comparison in general. Google Search, their bread and butter, is a tool. It's job is to as fast as possible get me on my way to some destination. Facebook on the other hand *is* the destination. It's a source of content, so naturally I'm going to spend time there. In what scenario would I ever spend an equivalent amount of time searching, or using some other tool? I don't spend time holding a hammer just for the sake of hammering. I use it to build something and then use what I built.
Honestly, the closest Google sites I can think of that are comparable to Facebook would be Reader and Youtube. But I don't typically browse Youtube...I go there from a link, or go there to directly search for something. My time in Reader is spent reading through content...but it's the content I'm using, the tool is just a means to an end. But on Facebook I tend to browse, jump from profile to profile, read through the day's events, etc.
In what world is the purpose of Google the same as the purpose of Facebook?
This is like saying that people at the mall spend more time at the Barnes & Noble than in front of the "You Are Here" maps.
From TFA:
"To be sure, there's wiggle room in these estimates, which comScore bases on a combination of reports from a panel of two million users around the world and data from websites' servers. But the time spent posting photos, updating status messages and scrolling through news from friends has at least grown to rival just about everything else people do online."
Two million sure sounds like a lot, but when you take into account the apparently 400 million users facebook has (And god knows how many people have a google account), that's statistically pretty irrelevant (0.5% of facebook users).
It's probably "close enough", but there's no mention of how their statistics are gathered, whether or not idle time matters, and what they're using for their methodology.
Maybe I'm just too lazy and didn't go to the comScore parents to find all of this out.
Google is about finding and organizing shit you want.
Facebook is about the narcissistic pursuit of yourself.
The 60's was the "me" generation.
The 70's was the "me me" generation.
The 80's was the "me me me" generation.
The 90's was the "me me me me" generation.
The first decade of the 21st century is turning out to be the "it's all about me me me me me me me (keep repeating until you run out of breath) generation.
So there's being into yourself, and then there's those sick fucks on Facebook.
=)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
So a site that is designed to keep you on the site as long as possible has finally gotten more online time than a site that is designed to push you to other sites as fast as possible.
Color me unimpressed.
4chan has hookup threads, your argument is invalid.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
If you got at&t, your primary email and many of your account related pages are through yahoo.
I google the occasional thing and use Thunderbird for email so there is no reason for me to be on any Google for services for any length of time but I almost always have a Facebook tab open.
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
There's an easier way. Start playing Mafia Wars and just shoot the guy.
is that the overwhelming majority of comments are from people with facebook icons. That's right -- they're already fucking logged in to facebook.
This sounds more like Facebook is a Bigger waste of time for More people than Google.
Laptop. Doggy style. Simple.
more online-time on a search engine means that it takes you longer to find what you were looking for in the results. which means that the search-engine has worse result.
why do you think they have instant-seach soon?
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Facebook is blocked entirely on our corporate firewall. I wonder how much of a productivity gain we get from that. Little do the admins know that they should be blocking slashdot as well!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Even if it wouldn't be a statistical fluctuation, what derives from there is: for the time being, Google manages to get more profit from less user interaction (that is, lower cost).
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The Prophet White did glimpse the Facebook, and spake: it sounds like a huge waste of time. And comScore found that it was so, that there was no longer a need to search, when what was sought is found.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I was told today to shift my focus from our websites SEO/Traffic and focus on getting to 5 digits in "Fans" with our Facebook page...
Ave Molech Setting
"There was a proof that people spent more time on Facebook than Google, but it just hasn't held up."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine