Gadgetory

I cuts could be looming at struggling social network myspace there are reports that the news court own site may have to lay off more than 1,000 employees in the United States and overseas that's about fifty percent of its workforce nearly the entire staff is off this week in order to save the business money facebook me while dealing another blow to internet Titan Google according to internet tracker Experian Facebook's surpassed Google to be the most visited website for most of 2010 what does that mean for google what does it mean for facebook joining us more for a rematch is jon rettinger director in chief of technobuffalo and andrew sea turtle who's director of ecosystem calm welcome to you both gentlemen John how serious is this if there are now more people more Americans logging on to Facebook than Google oh this is tremendously serious this is the first time in about six year history of Facebook that Facebook has surpassed Google a mounting for mounting to eight point nine percent of all US traffic there's no doubt these two companies are clearly headed for a collision course Facebook controls the social media arm of the web and Google controls the rest Google serve dabbled in the social media realm in the past and failed miserably referencing something like Google Wave which was dubbed by Google as email to point oh and to quote them a radically different step in communication they've also failed with a product called Google Buzz which is still in existence right now what was plagued with privacy issues from the start it's really failed to see any sort of massive adoption facebook on the other hand as really putting a solid push into the search engines really bread and butter with Facebook questions which was launched in beta and earlier July I'm drew do you agree look internet businesses are an area where quality of traffic is much more important than quantity it's true that facebook is now more popular in terms of the number of people visiting it then Google is but if someone spends an hour on google searching for new dishwasher that's very very valuable to Google if someone spends an hour on Facebook looking at pictures of their friends vacations that is not very valuable to Facebook mmm the thing is Andrew the perception may well be that the rest of the industry is innovating i'm thinking of groupon in particularly in terms of solid sales on the streets you know doing local deals done indeed Facebook with the way that it is now being able to leverage that vast audience that it has around the world let us not forget the perception is that the others are renovating faster than google would you accept that I think that's a very strong misperception I think that Google has shown that it's definitely able to buy up companies like YouTube and rightly and turn them into products like Google video and Google Docs things that drive traffic and things that could become core revenue generators in the future in contrast yes Facebook has launched Facebook questions yes it's launched a new messaging service but when it buys companies likes a hot potato or drop yo their hood ornaments they don't add to Facebook's core business of advertising driven revenue shoulder by stone woods absolutely now if I can interject when as Andrews referencing people looking at the friends pictures on Facebook's are also looking at vas advertising that's populating the site so I think that's a vast because in this conception a misrepresentation to say that traffic doesn't matter that traffic is the bread and butter of company like Facebook and if you look at for every successful Google innovation there's an equally unsuccessful innovation you only get a certain amount of popular goodwill Google's forays into social media such as google wave and google buzz have been met with great resistance from the population and facebook still has a trump card left to play should it need to they acquired 18 patents from friendster earlier in the year for about 40 million dollars which covers really a broad breadth of social media anything from making connections on on social media sites to using a branch to make connections with other friends and they really do have that trump card to play when it comes to patents should that be necessary mmm we have to leave that gentleman we're out of time but it's a fascinating discussion in an industry that just gets more and more interesting and intricate each year thank you very much all the best for 2011 John there and under thank you thanks Evan