Theme 5

There is currently a battle between those behind Facebook and those behind Google, to try and own as much of our internet experience as possible and dominate all of our activity on the web. Facebook does this by tapping into our relationships and encouraging us to use our friends for resource information. One of the main ways they do this is using the "like" button. For the users, it allows them to see what their friends like and relate to their likes and dislikes. Facebook monitizes this because Facebook creates a registry of what all Facebook users like and sell the information to retail partners so that they can find better ways to advertise. Facebook also encourages us to use our friends for resources by creating the status updates. People post questions they want their friends to answer or information they want their friends to know. This creates an almost instant response for those on Facebook.

Google, on the other hand, uses other methods to keep us on their site. Google helps us find information and websites by basing the results on what we have previously viewed on Google. While you shop off of websites from Google, Google will show ad's with relevant products on it, so that you do not have to leave Google's page to search for things. They all monitize their information by grouping together all of the sites people have went on, anonymously, and selling it to other companies so that they can see what people are searching. They do this so that they could better their advertising.

Overall, I think that Google will emerge as dominant when discussing which would make better use of our personal data to "help us" find stuff. Google has every website on the internet available for you with the click of a button. You can find anything you want within a matter of seconds. By using the websites I previously visited as a guideline for the future websites that come up when I press search, helps make the search a little more personal.

However, I think differently when discussing which has the best strategies to hold our attention to the site. I think that Facebook has many more attractions and things to do that would keep us on the site longer than Google. Google is just a search engine and a way to navigate to other sites. Facebook has games, profiles, photos, videos, etc., much more than Google does.

And here's something interesting I found while looking up information...

Facebook makes up 7.07% of web visits, while Google makes up 7.03%. While that it not much of a difference, it still shows that Facebook is more popular than Google!