It may already have. First, about that metric, ‘time spent on site’. This metric is very important in social media because we don’t typically have many page views- most blogs are a long scroll of stories that analytics engines read as a single page view. Same with platforms like Facebook. So the operative metric to watch these days is time spent on site.

Some stats on Facebook usage

Facebook, according to Wikipedia, had around 350 million members worldwide as of December 2009. A recent study of college student use of Facebook found that students were spending more time on Facebook than Google and that fully 50% of those users visited the site at least once a day. The Wikipedia entry breaks down users by country and, notably, China and Viet Nam are not included because they block the site. As of April 2009 it was estimated that 1.6 billion people globally have Internet access.

So what does this mean? First Facebook’s penetration is staggering. If these numbers are even close to accurate Facebook has captured 20% of all users on the web. And they are active- half visit the site daily. Factor in the fact that China, with a population of 1.3 billion and Viet Nam with 75 million, are not included and we can conclude that their penetration to users outside these countries is at an even higher percentage.

I don’t have stats for time on site for Facebook but I’m willing to bet they are high because of the nature of the Facebook stream, the social graph and the entertainment value. In comparison Google only captures our extended attention when we’re in an app like Gmail and there is little evidence that Gmail generates any significant portion of Google’s ad revenues. When we search, if Google does its job, we’re out of there as fast as possible because we found what we were looking for. When we go to Facebook we are at the place we want to be- it is a destination whereas Google is a signpost.

Revenue models are changing because of personal networks

Let’s look at the implications of these stats on Facebook as an ad platform. I’ve been playing with Facebook Ads and it is fascinating. While they operate in a very similar way to Google’s Adwords including auction-style bidding for clicks, their targeting works at an entirely different level. With Adwords you target by keywords and a few demographics like geo-location. With Facebook you target by keywords and demographics that include user information like gender, relationship status, interests, job titles- anything that a Facebook user includes in their public Profile. This is a huge difference from the faceless targeting of Google.

I’m not denigrating Google- the search giant has a big advantage in that they understand intent. And Facebook users are not there for information…yet. That is going to change however. People are starting to actively utilize their personal networks to acquire information used to make buying decisions and to find resources. This is trust-based search: If my friends like the VW Golf I’m going to consider it seriously. Same for restaurants, plumbers, etc.

Facebook will become the default destination in 2010

While I hate making predictions, I’m fairly confident that Facebook will surpass Google as a primary destination on the web in 2010. It may already have. Google, over the past 11 years, has provided us with universal free access to information. Facebook is providing us with universal access to free global communication. When we start using Facebook for both information access and communication it becomes the default destination to start our online (including mobile) activity. Monetize that!