It’s just like another battle between three main rivals, that is making the news recently, but the inexorable rise of Facebook is just about to deal the killer blow.

Facebook recently achieved a big psychological breakthrough in the US, when, for the week ending 13th March, its weekly market share of visits overtook Google.com.

What about the UK?  Facebook is the second most visited website in the UK and has been for a while but google remains out in front.

% of UK Internet Visits

Google 9.34%

Facebook 6.01%

Facebook still has a bit to go to catch up with Google in the UK, unlike in the US.

The main reasons for this is that in the US, Social Networking is more popular, and Google does not dominate the market for search in the US (70%)  as much as it does in the UK (over 90%).

Facebook growth

Facebook’s success is at the expense of Bebo, who’s parent (AOL) has announced recently that it is looking to sell or shut it down, and MySpace.  This is remarkable growth for Facebook when Bebo was the market leader just three years ago.

MySpace has tried re-launches, but it seems too little, too late.

For the foreseeable future it looks like Facebook is in an unassailable position and may well have Google in it’s sites.  For a business looking to utilise social media, it seems that a once very crowded field has been singled down to an obvious choice.