New Comm Biz

The last 2 months have seen absolute INSANE growth in both Twitter and Facebook. While Twitter is the current diva, Facebook’s no ugly duckling itself. I (an many others) have wondered what it would take for the “Real Time Web” (ie Twitter search and persistant status updates) to put a dent in Google’s dominance.

Are we seeing the first signs of damage to Google’s dominance?

Today while commenting on Imran Khan’s adjusted (lower) predictions of Googles earnings anouncements TechCrunch noted that search was down in February:

What’s got him spooked? Through February, comScore is showing declines in U.S. search activity (measured in query volume) and Khan’s own checks with search-engine marketers leads him to believe that commercial-oriented searches took a hit during the quarter. That would be significant since so far search has remained the healthiest segment of the online advertising industry.

Yes there are many reasons that consumer search is down. One very likely reason is people search when they’re shopping and people aren’t shopping as much. But it’s also important to note that reports have shown that consumer online social networking activity has seen huge growth. Largely attributed to the assumption that the unemployed spend an increased ammount of time hanging out on Twitter and Facebook.

I don’t have to search as much.

So if people are spending more time online why are they doing less searching? The obvious answer to me is that I don’t have to search for as many things. The 2800+ people I follow on Twitter, the 820+ people I subscribe to on FriendFeed and my 481 “friends” on Facebook push a mountain of largely relevant content to me every day.

If I am going to buy something I am more likely to ask my huge network for recommendations rather than do a series of searches, read journalists reviews and comb through pages of near anonymous user ratings.

All of this social activity leads to fewer Google searches. When I do search for something via a search engine I’m usually looking for something I already know exists, so I’m even less likely to click on advertising than I was before. Now with FriendFeed’s amazing search functionality I usually go to it first before going to Google.

It seems very plausible to me and the fact that Google has been very aggressive adding near real time Twitter results to their search results could indicate that they do see this as a threat.

I’ll of course wait until other smarters, than me on this topic weigh in on this, which he will.

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