According to a recent Nielsen report, Americans now spend more time on Facebook than on any other website. An average American spends 23 percent of their online time on a social networking site – twice the amount of time spent on the number two category, online games. To further put this into context, time spent on the 75 “other” online categories combined – sports, music and personals among others – accounts for only 35 percent of Americans’ total Internet time.
Commentators are pointing to these numbers and referring to the impact as the shrinking Web; Facebook has become so prevalent that it is the Internet itself to a large number of people. The M&A activity of Facebook and the investment in social media by Google with Google+, along with Google’s pursuit of owning the Web experience by being the authentication, the store for our bookmarks, and the browser that is the very portal to our online experience, underlines the value and the importance of social media.
The arms race is not about owning the Internet; it is about dominating consumers’ experience of it. Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram doesn’t make financial sense, but Instagram was making far too much noise for Facebook to ignore it in their quest for social media domination. Facebook wants to dominate the experience of the Web (in this case the way pictures are shared) so acquiring Instagram was a natural step in that direction.
This drive to domination is not meeting resistance from the mainstream consumer; social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are now part of the infrastructure of the Web. It’s barely a choice.
All of us are increasingly becoming consumers of prepared, curated and recommended content through these channels, rather than the content hunter-gatherers riding the plains of Google. When people share and recommend content, it then becomes far more valuable, as it then carries the stamp of approval from a trusted social source.