Facebook ranks as most visited site in US

Google, step aside. Social networking giant lands #1 spot last week, says Hitwise

Facebook has surpassed Google as the most visited Website in the US, according to a report published on Monday by analytics company Hitwise.  

The firm said that for the week ending March 13, 2010, Facebook became the most visited site in the US.  Last week the two Internet giants accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits.  Facebook barely surpassed Google, with 7.07%, while Google had 7.03% of the weekly market share.  

Hitwise said Facebook's market share increased 185% last week compared to the same week last year, while visits to Google increased only 9% during the same time frame.  

There's certainly many factors which could lead to data reports like these.  Facebook currently has over 400 million users accessing its social network.  At the same time, Facebook is a platform for social games.  Zynga alone brings 83 million active users playing Farmville on top of the Facebook platform, notes VentureBeat.  Facebook has also grown to become one of the largest digital photo sharing site on the Web - the social network sees 3 billion photos uploaded to its site each month.  

On the other hand, Google is busy making its own efforts to make its services, in particular its Gmail platform, even more habitually engaging.  It launched Buzz, which pretty much was inspired by the social networking features offered by Facebook and Twitter.  Obviously, it hasn't taken off quite well as Facebook based on statistics like these.

I don't know about you, but there are pretty much five main pages I load up when getting on the Web:  my work email, my personal email, the New York Times Website, my Vator (of course), and last but not least, Facebook.