Here is a chart that really drove home the popularity of social networking via mobiles (click the image for a larger version):

Whats the point? Nothing all that fancy, this is just more great evidence of the power of social marketing; and it seems the more evidence to convince skeptics the better.

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You could knock us over with a feather. Though the various measurement services that report on search market share – NetRatings, Hitwise, Compete, and comScore – all show slightly different percentages for each search engine, Google doesn’t go backwards often.

It did in December 2007, according to NetRatings. In November 2007, Google held 57.7 percent of the search market, as they handled nearly 4.3 billion queries.

In December, Google’s nearly 4.1 billion queries occupied only 56.3 percent of search. Yahoo saw a smaller search drop, from 17.9 percent (1.3 billion queries) in November to 17.7 percent (1.27 billion queries).

Microsoft’s MSN and Live Search brought in 996 million queries in December, good enough for 13.8 percent in December. These represented a gain from 881 million November queries (12 percent.)

	Provider	Searches (000)	Share of Searches	Searches per Searcher
1.	Google Search	4,062,536	56.3%	37.9
2.	Yahoo! Search	1,273,688	17.7%	22.4
3.	MSN/Windows Live Search	995,899	13.8%	31.7
4.	AOL Search	339,761	4.7%	15.2
5.	Ask.com Search	159,529	2.2%	10.0
6.	My Web Search	70,630	1.0%	10.4
7.	Comcast Search	34,715	0.5%	10.1
8.	NexTag Search	29,019	0.4%	2.9
9.	AT&T Worldnet Search	25,159	0.3%	9.1
10.	BizRate Search	17,205	0.2%	2.8

Source: Nielsen Online, MegaView Search

Take statistics from Hitwise, comScore, Compete, and Nielsen//NetRatings as an example. Their reports don’t always cover the same ground, but when they do, the results are often quite different. Just recently, they created a question of whether Microsoft had lost or gained market share in a certain month.

So, again, this uncertainty isn’t really suited to the modern business world, and may, in fact, be causing a lot of onlookers to stay on the sidelines. Steve Wadsworth, president of The Walt Disney Company’s Internet group, told Seth Sutel, "We need measurement of the audience and their use of the system that’s clear, simple and actionable for a marketer. You need comparability with other media."

If that comparability is achieved, online advertising might go way up. It should go further up (or less far down), anyway, than it would have in the current economy without solid measurements.

The AP puts this year’s Web ad spending at $20 billion, by the way, up 25 percent from the previous period.

In 2006 search related advertising accounted for nearly as much revenue as online display campaigns and investment in search has increased faster.

Google had 80 percent of all Canadian search engine queries in the second quarter of 2007. The company has a larger share of the market than in the U.S., where it accounted for 53 percent of queries in August 2007, according Nielsen//NetRatings.

Competitors Yahoo and MSN are working to prevent Google consolidating its hold on the market, where about two-thirds of the population is online and there is room for Internet advertising to grow.

Microsoft has invested heavily in search, and has been persuasive in attracting Canadian advertisers with its adCenter option, which is viewed as a good deal by some advertisers who are using paid search.

Paid search is one of the online ad types contributing to the mediums growth, according to the Canadian Marketing Association. It estimates that Internet ad spending will pass all other ad types excluding television and telemarketing by 2011.

Other key (non-mobile-related) findings:

• 56% “only get ads they want or need” from the Internet; television, 53%.
• 80% researched a product online and bought it at a brick-and-mortar.
• 74% use search engines to find local businesses in retail and services (versus paper yellow pages, 65%; Internet yellow pages, 50%; newspapers, 44%; white pages, 33%; TV, 29%; and consumer review sites, 18%).

My favorite findings, however, were that almost 75% of the 2000 people surveyed felt they are overexposed to advertising already. And participants agreed that having ads sent to them is only slightly more preferable than using search engines to find businesses.

Um, what? The vast majority of people think we’re overexposed to ads, but the same people still prefer advertising to finding businesses and products themselves? Are we going to be eating our cake and having it, too, now?

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Sure, it might look it.  Heck, Jamaica’s GDP falls into that $10-$15 billion range, and I think rather few people would elect to own a website instead of a tropical island.  Microsoft isn’t prone to gambling, however, and it was Redmond’s own math that equated five percent of Facebook with $500 million.

That number was made public by the Wall Street Journal, a strong and solid source.  Another good place to get information is Nielsen//NetRatings, and earlier today, the research firm revealed that Facebook is now receiving more unique visitors in the UK than MySpace.

Facebook had a slim margin of victory in August – just around 100,000 people.  Still, given the network’s phenomenal growth, this is likely to widen.  With enough time, the gap should really open up, and marketers’ dollars will flow in to take advantage of Facebook’s forthcoming system of targeted advertising.

Statistics from Compete indicate that the same sequence of events could occur in the US.

So, is a single social network better than Jamaica?  Maybe not.  But Microsoft may also view Facebook as a sort of tipping point in the battle against Google and Yahoo.  In this scenario, the network would act as a priceless key to the Internet kingdom, in addition to whatever value it had on its own.

Is Facebook Worth $10 Billion?

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has done well in growing the site and the company expects this year to have a profit of $30 million on revenue of $150 million. Still that being said is Facebook really worth $10 billion?

Over at All Things Digital,  Kara Swisher writes," But in comparative terms to the search giant, Facebook is a lemonade stand. Google brought in $3.9 billion in revenue in just the second quarter alone and, um, is increasing its dominance over the search sector in a mighty scary way."

"Facebook, on the other hand, gets half its annual revenue right now from a sweetheart guaranteed revenue deal with, drum roll, Microsoft. No matter what either Facebook or Microsoft says, it is a money-losing deal for Microsoft so far."

A Neilsen//Netratings report revealed that MySpace beats Facebook in time spent among visitors between the ages of 12-17. Dual visitors to the sites spent an average of 398 minutes on MySpace and 93 minutes on Facebook. Exclusive visitors to MySpace spent an average of 331 minutes on MySpace and 74 minutes on Facebook. Facebook does have around 40 million active users and does not include padded numbers like MySpace, which says it has 100 million accounts although not all of them are active.

Facebook has a ways to go if it wants to be considered worth $10 billion. Right now I just don’t see it.

Facebook Beats MySpace In UK

“Perfspot.com had no recorded figures until April 2007; since then it has grown by 756% in just four months – making it the fastest growing social network in 2007 ahead of Facebook, which has grown by 541% across the eight months from December 2006 -August 2007,” according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

PerfSpot still had just 274,000 unique users in August, though (compared to Facebook’s 6,506,000), so we’ll leave it alone for the time being.

The real news is the trade in positions between Facebook and MySpace.  Nielsen//NetRatings states that “Facebook received 6.5 million Unique Visitors in August 2007 compared to 6.4 million for MySpace . . .”

Admittedly, the writing’s been on the wall for quite some time; we saw UK searches for Facebook overtake searches for MySpace over two months ago.  Nonetheless, it would appear that there’s a new leader among social networks in the UK.

Hat tip to Mashable’s Adam Ostrow.

MySpace And Facebook Visitors Drive Time Spent

In August, teens who visited both sites spent on average 20 percent more time on MySpace than those who just visited a single site. Facebook saw an even greater benefit in time spent from dual visitors, who spent an average 26 percent longer at the site than exclusive Facebook visitors.

"Teens who enjoy social media are intensive users and highly engaged. They are venturing onto multiple networks to experience new features and broaden their connections," said Jason Lee, media analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings.

"This demographic is typically drawn to what’s new, and since they are growing up online, they are not afraid of learning the latest Web technologies."

Since Facebook opened registration to the public last year, the site has seen triple digit traffic growth, increasing 117 percent from 8.9 million unique visitors in August 2006 to 19.2 million unique visitors in August 2007. The growth rate for visitors 12-17 has been even higher, increasing 122 percent year over year. The majority of these new Facebook visitors are not new to social networking says Nielsen, more than 80 percent of Facebook visitors in August also went to MySpace.

"MySpace introduced a lot of people, especially young people, to social networking, and that forum continues to be overwhelmingly popular," said Lee.

"But Facebook’s innovative features, many born out of partnerships with third party developers, are driving user growth. Teens continue to interact with friends on MySpace, but have not hesitated to follow their peers to the latest social networking brand. At this point, each site has a unique offering, and teens are happily visiting both."

Indeed, Microsoft was designated the top parent company, with a unique audience of over 118 million people.  And although Google’s audience outnumbered Yahoo’s (116.9 million vs. 110.6 million, respectively), the average user spent around 80 more minutes with Yahoo than with Google.

In terms of top brands, Yahoo achieved an even bigger lead; the company scored a time per person of around 3 hours and 20 minutes, while Google got just one hour and 12.  Google’s audience was once again bigger, but the gap, at least, was smaller (at 1.4 million people).

By now you’ve probably noticed that Nielsen//NetRatings scored things in a slightly unusual way.  “A parent company is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs owned by a single entity,” states a press release.  “A brand is defined as a consolidation of multiple domains and URLs that has a consistent collection of branded content.”

“Nielsen also included a list of the top online advertisers with estimated spending for August, which included Low Rate Source, NexTag, Experian Group (EXPN), IAC, Countrywide (CFC), AT&T (T), NetFlix (NFLX), Verizon (VZ), Monster Worldwide (MNST), and Privacy Matters,” notes The Utility Belt’s Jon Fortt.  Don’t be surprised if some of those real estate-related brands slip, however, given the current housing market.