Facebook has taken over Google as the most visited website in the US.

(source : http://www.sneijers.net)

There is no reason to believe the trend is to weaken. As far as Facebook keeps growing (above 400 millions users nowadays), the biggest social network in the world should soon takes the crown of world n°1 website off the head of Larry & Sergey’s search engine.

The web is already social, and Facebook sets the pace

As a matter of facts, the shift has occured, yet. The web is truly social.

Whereas Facebook grows in size, the social network remains far in the shadow of Google in terms of revenues. Those could reach 1 to 2 billions dollars in 2010,… twelve less than the latter.

Though, Facebook runs in the tracks of its forerunner. The Facebooks ads service sounds like a terrific, very accurate, advertisement tool that could become very popular in the years to come.

Moreover, today, lots of discussions, conversation, content sharing or news posting take place directly on Facebook. Companies have skipped the stage of setting up their own blog and rely solely on a Facebook page and/or Twitter account for their digital marketing.

Google Social Search and the race to catch up with the social web

So far, Google hasn’t lost the game. Despite its backfire in China, the search engine remains strongly armed.

However, recent initiatives induce Google is in a defensive position.

The company had to strike a financial deal with Twitter in order to index its content in its search results. Google has been challenged by internautes regarding the instant search.

Recently, Google announced a number of move toward more social search and actions. Not always succesful, so far.

Social network Orkut has hit in a limited number of countries.

Google Buzz hasn’t been a very big hit, useless to say.

With Google Social Search, the company of Mountain View is touching its core business.

The service, still under beta version, demonstrates how the social web is now taking the lead as opposed to the historical web.

Google Social Search relies on the social graphs the company has an access to, via Gmail and other logged in tools.

Hereby, though, Google implicitely recognize that social recommendation is more relevant than its search algorithm.

There, it is not sure Google is in a better position than Facebook…

Colin Hensley, Corporate Affairs and Planning General Manager of Toyota Europe, explains the motivations of Toyota in this video interview, recorded at an event organised by the IABC and ZN in Brussels.

“We were looking at different ways to engage with our stakeholders, with our customers, says Colin Hensley. We thought it was a good time to start with social medias”.

“Our colleagues in North America had quite a positive experience already on Twitter (…) The experience was positive because, via the followers and the followings, we could see who is interested by what we are saying”.

Journalist and NGO’s are on Twitter

So far, those people interested are (mostly) journalists and NGO’s, underlines to Colin Hensley. Sure, due to the tiny cost of communication, NGO’s are actively using social networks to get their message out.

“Another advantage of Twitter is that it is very quick. And we have to be very succinct. It’s a very good process to go through”.

In the future, there will be a growing demand for ressources to be dedicated to the engagement process on social networks, predicts the corporate affairs manager of Toyota Europe.

The process is “time consuming” as it goes with one to one engagement. But the cost can be balanced with less paper and more online content, adds Colin Hensley.

The message on the corporate blog becomes a bit different

Besides, Toyota Europe is also actively blogging. The message is not always the same as in other official forms of communication.

“We are making it more personal”, says Colin Hensley

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