UPDATED 11:06 EDT / DECEMBER 29 2010

Facebook Kicks Past Yahoo, Realizing its Threat Potential

It must be Mark Zuckerberg’s year as his masterpiece, Facebook claims the number 3 largest website title, overthrowing Yahoo! with a large margin. ComScore, the company which perpetrated the research came up with new metrics and presented the data that depicts Facebook’s 648 million unique visitors for November 2010 versus Yahoo’s 630 million.

The same report stated how Facebook battered Yahoo in different categories: “Facebook leaped over Yahoo in a batch of September comScore metrics related to U.S. video properties. As of August 2010, Facebook delivered video to 58.5 million users versus Yahoo’s 53.9, representing a total of 243 million viewing sessions to Yahoo’s 229 million. The only metric where Yahoo actually beat Facebook out was on viewing time—Yahoo users viewed an average of 31.6 minutes of online video per person versus Facebook users’ 20.5 minutes per person.”

The two other sites that stand between Facebook and the crown are Microsoft with 869 million unique visitors and the defending champion Google. Yahoo, with all the job cuts and closure of sites like Flickr and Delicious.com, has landed in the fourth place. This movement is actually not surprising as Facebook’s rise to prominence is undisputed. This was also acknowledged by Yahoo’s leadership team and has clearly noted that the social network giant is indeed a threat to their business.

In an interview at a Bloomberg event, Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo stated how they perceive Facebook now. “Our greatest competitor probably is Facebook, more so than Google. They’re a hot site, but there’s room for more than one of anything.” Yahoo! also admitted that they have indeed lost the battle as the world’s prime search engine.

But, the more interesting battle between Google and Facebook has been the subject of most rivalry news in 2010. The saga will definitely welcome 2011 and the competition might just grow bigger and bigger, to hopefully benefit users. Just this holiday season, Hotwise has conducted a study in UK website traffic during this period and revealed that the social network has, for the first time ever, surpassed the search engine giant.


A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities.

  • 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more
  • 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network.
About SiliconANGLE Media
SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI.

Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.