Facebook on the Move: Will Prompt Users to Make the Site Their Default Homepage
The battle for Internet search supremacy has gotten fiercer as Facebook, Inc. ups its ante by introducing a new feature – a bar appearing in the pages prompting its users to set the popular social network as their default homepage.
Last Monday, a spokeswoman of this California-based social network said that in the next several weeks, Facebook’s over 500 million users can expect to see a homepage default option button appearing at the top of some of its pages.
This homepage default option has long been offered by other companies like Google, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., as having a default homepage option keeps people coming back to their pages, pushing user traffic and consequently increasing advertising rates.
Facebook’s move of making its site as a user’s portal to the Internet will certainly intensify its rivalry with Google, a long known leader in Internet search.
Data from comScore, a marketing research company, shows that in the third quarter of this year, 6% of primary homepages in the U.S. already are Facebook, long before the social network started to prompt users to make the site as their default homepage.
Noah Elkin, an eMarketer analyst said, "This is part of the larger battle for online digital supremacy. Both Google and Facebook want to make their services the gateway for all their users' communications needs."
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