Social Media, Search Engine | featured news

U.S. Web surfers are spending more time socializing on Facebook than searching with Google, according to new data from researchers at comScore Inc.

Social networking platform Facebook racked up the most U.S. hits on its Web site last week, edging past search giant Google to be the country's most-visited site for that period, according to data from research firm Hitwise.

Google Inc injected social networking features into its popular Web email product as the world's No. 1 search engine seeks to fend off competition from Facebook and Twitter.

The buzz around realtime search of social networks has mostly surrounded Twitter and Facebook. Collecta, OneRiot and the search giants, including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo all tap into Twitter (and Facebook too) to capture the realtime stream of content. But MySpace is also getting into the game, recently releasing a set of real-time APIs that both OneRiot and Google will be tapping into to provide content from the social network. Today, real-time search engine Collecta has launched a search platform that offers a real-time view into MySpace.

Google will supplement its search results with updates posted each second to sites like Twitter and Facebook.

"Realtime" is the hot buzzword right now, and Google and MySpace appear set to further it along with a new agreement that will see Google serve up search results from MySpace in realtime. What these means is that all publicly available data that's on MySpace will be available to Google within seconds, we've learned.

Yahoo continues their strategic defeat from the front lines of innovation. Earlier today they announced that they'd be "deeply integrating" with Facebook Connect, allowing Yahoo users "to see your Facebook friends’ activities on Yahoo! and share Yahoo!

Yahoo Inc. is jumping on the Twitter bandwagon in its latest attempt to get people to use its Internet search engine more frequently. Beginning Thursday, Yahoo will mine the short messages posted on Twitter to find fresher information about hot topics. Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. had earlier announced plans to incorporate Twitter messages into search results, but Yahoo said it will be the first among them to include such "tweets" on its main search results.

Twitter is selling the rights to mine its communications hotbed to both Internet search leader Google and Microsoft in dueling deals that underscore the growing importance of being able to show what's on people's minds at any given moment.

Microsoft has struck non-exclusive search deals with Facebook and Twitter to integrate real-time status updates and tweets into Bing's search results. Microsoft online services division president Qi Lu and Yusuf Mehdi ...