Social Networks Eclipse Search Engines in Popularity

Social Networks Eclipse Search in Popularity

For many years, search engines has been the most popular websites online. Most Internet users start their online journey with a search engine thereby making search the most popular Internet destination, until the middle of 2010 that is. For the first time, Internet traffic to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter exceeded traffic to search engines.

Earlier this week, Twitter mark the occasion of its users sending the 20 billionth tweet. The much talked about 20 billionth tweet was characteristic of what some of the critics of social networking site called pointless gibberish. Gibberish or 20th billionth tweet if you prefer to see that way which was sent at 1544 GMT last Saturday by GGGGGGo_Lets_Go, a Tokyo graphic designer for an advertising agency. GGGGGGo_Lets_Go was inundated with congratulatory messages from around the world.

While twitter is the rising start of social networking, Facebook is the indisputable king at the moment, it attracts 55% of the social networking traffic in UK, making it three times the size of its nearest social networking rival; YouTube. Twitter is the 3rd most popular social networking force in UK. Given how fast Twitter is rising, it will not be a big surprise if it catches up with or even exceeded YouTube in the not too distant future. It took Twitter four years to reach 10 billion tweets, but five months after that, the number of tweet sent increase by 100%.

The combination of popularity of and phenomenal growth in in social networking has seen traffic to social networking site exceed search engine in May 2010 according to Experian Hitwise. A list of top 10 most popular websites in UK according to Alexa can be found below.

Top 10 UK Sites

1. Google UK
2. Facebook
3. Google Dot Com
4. YouTube
5. Yahoo
6. BBC Online
7. Windows Live
8. eBay UK
9. Wikipedia
10. Twitter

Bing Sitelinks – edging closer to Google in more ways than one

When setting out plans to become the second search engine on the net within a few year in 2008, Steve Balmer Microsoft chief executive said Microsoft has been know for entering a market late and becoming a marketing leader in that field within a short time. This is true of when Microsoft entered the networking Server market which was then dominated Novell, within a few short year, Microsoft over take Novell server. In the console market, XBox is a relatively new entrant to the market when compared with Sony Playstation, it is now a very well established console.

Bing, Microsoft new search engine is slowly but steadily making progress. Most observers argued that the initial blip Bing made on the share of the search engine market was because of the huge publicity that surrounded its launch, that was true, it is also true that Bing is a much better search engine than all the previous search engines Microsoft created and the fact is that people are actually beginning to like Bing and using it instead of Google.

Some of the things that is contributing to the popularity of Bing includes the fact that its SERP is almost identical to Google’s SERPS for some searches, this blurred the lines between Bing and Google. Bing is also introducing new technology like the visual search recently announced and Bing is adopting features associated with Google such as Sitelinks. A quick search for adult dating site Very Naughty show a comprehensive sitelink listing sub pages of the site.

If Bing continues to innovate at the current rate, in no time it will make significant inroad into Googles huge lead in the search engine market.

Yahoo profit up, revenue down and lanches new homepage

Internet search engine and portal Yahoo Inc released a result that did not cause much surprise in the city, Yahoo’s profit fall by 13%, the current economic downturn was blamed for the fall. Revenues into Yahoo’s coffers for the quart dropped to £953m, and reduction of roughly 13% when compared with profile with the same quarter last year.
Cost cutting and efficient management of resources mean that despite the drop in revenue, Yahoo’s profit rose by about $10 million. Shares in Yahoo fell on the back of the result and the forecast that income in the current quarter will be between between $55m to $65m.

New Homepage Launched
Just before the business side of Yahoo released revenue results yesterday, they were unveiling Yahoo’s new homepage to the US users. Yahoo’s portal is the most visited website on the internet, to keep that position the new Yahoo homepage come in customisable format that make integrating other popular sites Yahoo users visit such as Twitter and Facebook into their Yahoo homepage. A Yahoo spokes person was quoted as saying: “There is a destination for everything you are about in just a click or two. Now we are looking at Yahoo holistically, all centred around the user,” Mr Bhat told reporters in a conference call.
Yahoo’s new homepage comes with over 60 applications, users and developers are being encouraged to develop and plug in their own application to enhance their user experience. Users can add their own apps at the moment in the form of a web address they want Yahoo homepage to load, with developers, its more technical and that aspect of Yahoo’s new homepage is now live yet.

Microsoft closing in on Yahoo search business

Microsoft is said to be close to completing the purchase the search engine section of its rival in online search Yahoo. Just over a year ago, Microsoft launched a $45 billion bid for Yahoo in its entirety, the then CEO, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang rejected the bid saying it undervalues Yahoo.
Yahoo later invited Microsoft to make and improved bid which Microsoft refused to do saying its not interested any more however it is still interested in acquiring Yahoo’s search business. Rejection of Microsoft original offer contributed to the replacement of Jerry Yang with Carol Bartz as Yahoo CEO.

The new offer Microsoft and Yahoo are close to completing is said to be about $3 billion, but in addition to the cash Microsoft will be paying for Yahoo search business, it will also share revenues from the company for many years to come. If the deal is complete as expected, this will take Microsoft’s share of online advertising in US close to 30% which is the combination of Microsoft’s current 8% and Yahoo’s 20%, this still put Microsoft share of the online marketing at less than twice the market share of Google who controls 65% of the market share in US.

You can discuss issues to do with Microsoft and Yahoo at UK Webmaster Forum, registration is free.

Yahoo and Icahn reach agreement

Yahoo management and Carl Icahn, the share holder who seeks to replace the entire Yahoo board because of the way Yahoo handled Microsoft bid for Yahoo has reached and agreement. The agreement expands Yahoo board from eight members to eleven members. The new board comprise of the existing eight Yahoo board members,  Mr Icahn and two of his nominees.
The agreement meant Mr Icahn will not seek to replace the entire Yahoo board as he threatens to do at next board meeting.

Next Page »