The Unstoppable Growth of Social Media

Not to anyone’s surprise, Facebook , the most buzzed-about social network website has displaced Yahoo and became the second most visited website in the United States after Google. Based on the latest traffic statistics from January 2010, Facebook’s unique number of visitors from Jan.09-Jan.10 hit 133,623,529, surpassing Yahoo’s numbers of 132,077,594 unique yearly visitors.

Of course, Facebook still has a long way to go in order to overpower Google for its number one spot in the nation with 147.8 million unique visitors a year, but when you compare the average amount of time visitors spend on the website, Facebook has a definite lead. The average United States user spend 11.6% of their time on Facebook, in comparison to 4.255% on Yahoo and 4.15% on Google.

When it comes to business and marketing, the implication for this shift is becoming more and more obvious--social media is already playing, and will continue to play a significant role in modern day marketing. Social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter have positioned themselves in a perfect position for extensive future revenue growth. Not only does Facebook draw vast amount of traffic, it also captures and involves visitor attention span for more time than any other website. Which, in the eyes of advertisers, makes Facebook a perfect duo of maximum number of eyeballs and maximum exposure time--in essence, marketing dollars well spent.

Today, Facebook stand in front of a great opportunity. Not only does the website provides high unique visitor traffic and high visitors involvement rates, it can also provide traffic and exposure information to its advertisers to establish the metrics to calculate the return on investment.

Current modern day marketing provides so many opportunities for advertisers to invest their marketing dollars in various forms. However, due to online shifts, only the marketing media that can provide measurable, quantitative results to their advertisers will be the ones capturing the advertising dollars and showing growth in the marketplace.