Some important industry data recently revealed that Facebook managed to overtake Google last week with regards to website traffic. More visits were recorded by the social networking site as compared to the search engine. This fact alone is enough to cement the growing popularity of a site which currently has 400 million-plus users.

Although the data on Facebook vs. Google has some issues, like it did not include visits to other Google services like YouTube and Gmail, and searches carried out in a box on the toolbar of a browser were omitted, among other things, it is a good enough measure of the popularity of Facebook, as it has managed to command on this measure since September of 2007.

In addition to general users, Facebook is an appealing platform for advertisers as well, as it gives them a chance to reach out to a bigger audience, just like a television ad, but with the added benefit of much greater targeting.

While talking about the popularity of Facebook, and its recent milestone of overthrowing Google, Matt Tatham, Director of Media Relations at web analysis firm Hitwise, said, "It shows content sharing has become a huge driving force online. People want information from friends they trust, versus the anonymity of a search engine".