Facebook beats Google News 3:1

BrandRepublic has reported that Facebook has passed Google News as the 4th most popular source for news online with around 3.5% of the total search traffic according to HitWise compared to Google News with just 1.39%.

The more than double market share is impressive as this time last year Facebook had just 1% of the news traffic, so the 350% increase further re-affirms their strength to challenge Google as the #1 website in the world. Even with Google's RSS reader it still only accounts for an extra 0.1% of visitors. 

It is likely that Facebook will continue to roll out its News services as more organisations such as The Wall Street Journal join Facebook. It is likely Facebook will continue to be a disruptive force for traditional media as they improve their Fanpage platform and allow customisation to suit different business types.

Facebook can eventually supply very detailed visitor and reader demographics which is not possible with traditional search engines and even news websites.

Facebook credit platform expands

One of the suggested methods is a halfway solution which allows developers to choose between third party currency or Facebook currency. This also has long term benefits for companies using Facebook fan pages to promote and potentially sell their products online.

But this halfway solution of mixed credit payment solutions means that the switch to a pure Facebook currency may experience delays and may never reach true scale required to compete with Paypal or Google Checkout to be a true alternative.
While I can see the complex situation that Facebook have with their developers, it is unlikely that the developers would walk away from Facebook as its a successful platform. But the move towards a formal payment platform does require formal relationships between developers and Facebook which should help build formal development partnerships.