Facebook Beats Google on Xmas

From: http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/feeling-lucky/2009/12/31/facebook-beats-google-xmas

Could Facebook supplant Google (GOOG) as the most-visited Web site in the country in 2010? That question's been on everyone's lips ever since an official at the research firm Hitwise tweeted that on Christmas Day, more people used Facebook than Google or any of its related products.

Search Engine Journal contributor Arnold Zafra thinks that the Christmas triumph may be something of an outlier; Christmas, after all, is a time when people reconnect with their friends and family, and Facebook is uniquely positioned to help them do just that. Nevertheless, Zafra adds, it may indicate that Facebook may have outpaced e-mail as a communications medium. "Email is a thing of the past during these days, as Facebook and perhaps other social sites like Twitter are the more preferred ways of communicating online especially during special occasions," he writes.

And in another sign of Facebook's ubiquity, the security firm McAfee warned that hackers and malware distributors are increasingly focused on poisoning the site with spam. "Malware authors love following the social networking buzz and hot spots of activity; that will continue in 2010," the company warned. Apparently, popularity has its price.