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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."
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
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....
The kind of people who still use Yahoo do things really slowly... they're the kind of people who always get in front of you when you're late and drive ten miles per hour slower than the speed limit. So, yes, in a way 'user minutes' is a garbage metric because if a site attracts fast users that will make it seem less popular/useful (or whatever qualitative conclusion one is supposed to correlate to the metric) even it isn't, and vice versa a site that attracts slower users will seem more popular/useful when that isn't the case.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
If by "Socializing" you mean "investing time into building up a virtual farm/mafia/village/whatever". :P