Facebook Now Accounts for 25% of All U.S. Pageviews

Hitwise recently reported that 1 in every 4 pageviews in the US is on Facebook, and also incredible is Facebook’s claim that people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. Astonishing growth made even more amazing by realizing that the second place, and far behind Facebook, is YouTube with 6.39% of US pageviews and third place Google at 5.32% of US pageviews! To make Facebook’s 25% of US pageviews even more significant is that comScore reported that Facebook’s growth in the past year was 55% over the preceeding year. Pretty heady stuff, but the biggest questiona of all are- where are we headed with Social Media and will the growth continue at this kind of pace?

Get Ready for Interesting Litigation

It’s not hard to conclude that the more Social Media activity, the more likely that communications between individuals will be evidence in lawsuits. Just one more reason that individuals who participate in Social Media should be thoughtful about what they post of Social Media sites, since items posted on the Internet have a way of surviving forever as Google CEO Eric Schmidt and some people may decide they need to change their identifies because of what they’ve said and on Social Media sites. Otherwise I recommend this advice – Don’t say anything on a Social Media site that you wouldn’t want a jury to see. If jury hears something once they may believe, if a jury hears something said twice they start believing it’s true, but if a jury sees a posting on a Facebook they will believe it’s true!

Web 2.0 Update - Facebook Surpasses Google

Hitwise reports that Facebook became the most visited website in the US for the first time. Kind of takes your breath away that a social media site is getting more traffic than the largest search engine in the US. Since Facebook just went over 400 million users this was probably inevitable, but since Facebook is also starting its own email system, Titan, it’s likely Facebook traffic will continue to expand.

Internet Jurisdiction Makes Life Interesting

My friend Victoria Van Buren blogged about my Texas Bar Journal Article for March about Internet Jurisdiction, but the March 2010 issue is entitled “The Attorney and Social Media” and here are other articles of interest:

My friend John Browning organized these articles which I think are most timely and interesting.

3rd Circuit Bars Child Porn Prosecution of Teen in Sexting Photo

Some headline in the ABA Journal that “upheld an injunction that bars the child pornography prosecution of a teen girl in Pennsylvania who appeared topless in a photo that ended up on high school students’ cell phones.” The court did reach the question whether sexting photos are free speech protected under the First Amendment because the prosecutor over-reacted and threatened the teenager. Unfortunately we will continue to see more sexting cases as Web 2.0 grows whether we like it or not.