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Comment by steevdave | Hacker News Reader

Wait what? People search on Facebook for content? Maybe for content of what their friends are up to. I've never considered a social networking site to be a search engine, and considering Facebook's abysmal attempts at targeted marketing (their ads SUCK at relevance) no matter how many time I tell it that a certain ad is of no relevance. I just don't see how Facebook is "winning the web war". Maybe I have different friends than most, but pretty much everyone I know uses a search engine to find things. Even my mom, who isn't what I would call computer savy.

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That is certainly a valid point. Mostly what happens with people on facebook is that they stay on facebook. They play games, they chat, they look at pictures they stay on facebook. When you goto a movie the ads don't have websites, they have facebook pages. Facebook has created a new type of internet, a more closed siloed internet (Dave Winer reference). People used to use the internet, now they use sites.

The new layer is data locked into private site that farm content.

people (non-hackers) are searching for content (and people) on facebook. pages alone host a considerable amount of fresh content from businesses, institutions and organizations.

you do have to consider many of those searches as looking for stuff already in their social graph (friends, pages, etc). i know i use their search to navigate all the time.

They are winning the web war since their messaging has basically completely displaced AIM, MSN and GChat in the US in the 16-26 year olds. Its also put a decent dent into email for asynch communication, and I only expect that to continue.

I don't see facebook overtaking email in professional situations for a long time.

I Agree. If a business contact wants to get to me through facebook I cringe. Although I can see the current generation using it in a more professional sense.

Honestly, I think it's pretty likely that Facebook will tend towards with people having "Professional" profiles offsetting LinkedIn and they will offset email.

Obviously at this point it is largely just offsetting personal email, but I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss that as insignificant.

Oh no! What will Google do without all the money they make from GChat?

I don't really understand your point; any amount of money that they make from search or gmail or docs is just because someone is on that page and sees ads. The exact same situation applies with GChat assuming you use it through the gmail interface rather than through an alternate client (which most people do).

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