Is Facebook going to control the Internet?

‘Today I saw something that confirms that Facebook now controls the internet.’

When I read that statement I wondered what on earth the blogger was talking about, but I’m beginning to see. Let’s put the scale of Facebook and social media in context first.

The other day I attended a seminar on Social Media and, even though I don’t need convincing that it’s a phenomenon that’s here to stay, I was completely amazed by this short video “Statistics Show Social Media Is Bigger Than You Think”. Just to whet your appetite, here are some of the stats.

By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network

Years to Reach 50 millions Users: 

• Radio (38 Years),
• TV (13 Years),
• Internet (4 Years),
• iPod (3 Years)
• …Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months
• …iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.

Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen

Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth

People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them

78% of consumers trust peer recommendations

Only 14% trust advertisements

Like I said, amazing growth that’s changing the internet and the way we use it. And here’s the little plug-in from Facebook that’s going to change it even more.

Facebook has now given Web publishers the ability to include a “Likes” button with each post or article on their site, like the one I’ve put at the foot of this post on my other blog (WordPress isn’t letting me add one here). When you click “Likes” for the article, a link to it gets published to the news feeds of your friends on Facebook, so this little feature has the potential to drive a lot of new traffic to your content. Clever, innit? Especially when apparently we’re all now so keen on peer recommendations.

You’ll find the “Likes” plug-in featured on YouTube and Google, so they clearly think it’s a good idea. With that amount of internet muscle on its side Facebook can inject itself into just about every part of the web.

There’s lots more coming from Facebook to enable its world domination, but much of it too geeky for me to understand. If you want to know more, here are some good blogs to start from.

Right now I’m off to add “Likes” buttons to more of my blog posts and watch for the extra traffic rolling in.