Facebook's willingness to work with third-party developers and pull in third-party content, and its encouragement of content-sharing between members has helped the social network's population surge to more than 175 million members. That openness is also boosting Facebook's status as a traffic-driver: the social net has topped Google (NSDQ: GOOG) as the number-one source of traffic to a number of large sites, including PerezHilton.com, CafeMom.com and events site Evite.
And it's a trend to watch, since, as AdAge notes, Facebook now only gets about a third of Google.com's unique visitors, per comScore, and the trafficâo[per thou]both the clicks and the eyeballsâo[per thou]is what generates search revenues. Companies spent over $12 billion on search marketing last year.
Much of the Facebook-driven traffic comes from links that members post via areas like "Notes" and photos. If Facebook's influence as a traffic source continues to rise, the next step would be to figure out how to monetize the traffic to those areas with paid search. That would be one way to entice Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) to renew its search deal (and give Microsoft a better return on its $240 million investment in the social net).
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The Bard Revisited --- Press photographers take pictures of Professor Stanley Wells, left, chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace trust and one of the world's leading experts on Shakespeare studies according to the trust, as he poses next to a newly discovered portrait of William Shakespeare, in central London, Monday March 9, 2009. ---
8:48:12 PM
Coachella festival producers Goldenvoice are beefing up the dance offerings this year with a few notable additions to the 2009 lineup. The Chemical Brothers, Etienne De Crecy and the Orb are all now confirmed as late additions.
Additionally, Devendra Banhart and Murder City Devils will join the three-day annual fete in the desert next month. The Chemical Brothers appearance is a DJ set only, meaning they will be playing other material besides their own catalog of dance-floor staples in a more casual performance devoid of all the bells and whistles.
Speculation that the Chemical Brothers would return to the festival (they last performed at Coachella in 2005) reached a fever pitch earlier this year when television spots featuring the band's "Block Rockin' Beats" started airing on local cable television. Message boards on the official Coachella site lit up accordingly with rumors that the band would return to Indio, along with, of course, plenty of riffing from fans that the TV spots might imply that ticket sales were slow.
Coachella head Paul Tollett confirmed the additions today to a new magazine that Goldenvoice is sponsoring dubbed coachelladigital.com.
-- Charlie Amter
Ed Simons, left, and Tom Rowlands from the Chemical Brothers. Picture courtesy Astralwerks
Not much "throwing back" going on here, but hey, it's one of the best songs of the year with an equally rad clip that's ostensibly a performance video posing as an iPod commerical posing as Spongebob Squarepants. Plus, it's making me unreal excited to see Animal Collective this summer before they go and make a record that will probably be absent of melody and come out in 2012.
Facebook's willingness to work with third-party developers and pull in third-party content, and its encouragement of content-sharing between members has helped the social network's population surge to more than 175 million members. That openness is also boosting Facebook's status as a traffic-driver: the social net has topped Google (
