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YouTube Will Soon Pass Facebook As Second Biggest Website In US (cnbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the internet-shake-up dept.

According to a new study from market research firm SimilarWeb, Facebook may cede its runner-up position to YouTube in the next two to three months. Currently, the top five most-visited websites in the U.S. are Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo and Amazon, in that order. However, Facebook's monthly page visits are declining rapidly, from 8.5 billion to 4.7 billion in the last two years, which could shake up that order. CNBC reports: YouTube, which is owned by Google parent Alphabet, has seen increased traffic, the study said. The app has also experienced in increase in viewership. Yahoo is also poised to lose its position in the ranking. Amazon has already surpassed Yahoo during big spending months, including December 2017 and July 2018, when the e-commerce giant held its annual Prime Day. The study projects that Amazon will take over Yahoo's ranking in the next two to three months. However, none of the bottom four of the top five comes close to Google. Although it has seen some decline in website traffic thanks to app use and voice search, it saw approximately 15 billion visits in July 2018, the study said. The others were all below 5 billion, according to the report.

12 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Facebook is a declining WEBSITE rising APP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    A large amount of Facebook's traffic these days is mobile, going through their app, not their wesbite

    1. Re:Facebook is a declining WEBSITE rising APP by sanf780 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      YouTube has also a mobile application and a Smart TV application (in whichever variant it is) that people use too. The push to mobile might not be as strong as what Facebook does. I have seen people even use YouTube app as a music streaming application recently. I wonder if the main reason why Facebook is dropping to third position is due to people not being engaged into Facebook as in years past.

    2. Re:Facebook is a declining WEBSITE rising APP by duke_cheetah2003 · · Score: 2

      The Alex Jones de-platforming brouhaha has frightened a lot of content creators. Many are fleeing to alternate platforms, or at least mirroring their content on them as insurance, because they realize that it only takes a shift in the politically-correct winds and suddenly *they* can be de-platformed and de-monetized as well.

      I see this as a good thing. People need to get away from these 'platforms' and start learning how to create their own websites, not controlled by anyone other than themselves.

      Google, Apple, et al have a perfect right to kick anyone off for any reason they like. It's theirs, after all. The internet will simply treat their censorship as damage and route around them.

      That's all fine and good, but you have to remember, this censorship isn't so easy to 'route around', because so many have no idea how to publish content to the internet without someone like Facebook or YouTube standing there and holding their hand. Also, it's refreshing to see someone write that Google, Facebook, etcetc are perfectly within their right to kick anyone off their services, with or without a reason. People have become deluded into thinking 'free speech' somehow gives them rights over these sites, but fail to realize, websites and companies have the same free speech rights, and that includes the freedom to not speak.

    3. Re:Facebook is a declining WEBSITE rising APP by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      Can't wait to see Alex Jones show "Google, Apple, et all" who's boss.

      That would be something to see. But he's going to have to sell a lot of bogus supplements and snake oil to compete with Apple, who is now a trillion dollar corporation.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. They buried the lede... by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yahoo still exists?

    1. Re:They buried the lede... by Virtex · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yahoo still exists. When you visit one of their pages, it makes about 10 million GET requests from their server to pump up their page view count, assuming they count every GET request as a page view (this is corporate America - OF COURSE they count every request as a page view).

      --
      For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
    2. Re:They buried the lede... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yahoo still exists?

      Even weirder, numbers six and seven are Myspace and Geocities.

      Now if you'll excuse me, I have to sign off AOL because my Mom needs to use the phone.

  3. What does views mean? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 2

    What does views mean:

    Is this every time the page is viewed- or every time a request is made to one of their servers? If I don't go to facebook (I don't have an account), but websites I click on send back data of my movement around the web to feed my shadow profile, is that counting a visit to facebook?

    If so, it is no surprise that the top sites are mainly advertising websites. If I go to a forum and someone has embedded a you tube video, but I don't watch it, is that counted as a view?

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  4. Re:Do Search Engines Really Count? by The+Original+CDR · · Score: 2

    Never mind that YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google.

  5. Easy Answer. by Zorro · · Score: 2

    Youtube has useful applications. Facebook just exploits the dumb.

  6. Noise by xonen · · Score: 3, Informative

    Facebook has become noise. And they did it themselves.

    They send e-mails so frequently that it resulted in me ignoring them all. Any page is filled up with ads. Real interesting things rarely get posted.

    I check fb maybe once every 2 weeks. I might actually browse it a bit when i'm bored, but last time i did that was months ago.

    The only good usage of fb these days is to get in contact with companies. Companies that choose to ignore e-mails and phone calls (or just promise yes and do no) - for whatever reason it works better if the request or issue is made public on fb. It's a modern name-and-shame game.

    Apart that, the initial goal of 'get in touch with your friends' seem to be less the case and less fb's mission. Well, i use messenger if someone else wishes so. Personally i prefer e-mail over any messenger.

    --
    A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
    1. Re:Noise by iMadeGhostzilla · · Score: 2

      Same here, except I also deleted -- undid -- all my facebook posts, likes, and comments I ever made. Did it with a Chrome extension that uses your Activity Log to automatically undo all. I did download a copy of all my fb activity first.

      It's a clean slate now, and it feels like freedom. I visit every now and then to check posts from a couple of people who consistently post useful stuff but that's about it. And I still have my contacts.

      Btw watching that plugin do its thing at 16x speed was fascinating, realizing how much time I had making that content. I'll be sending the plugin author some coffee money.