Last month, we conducted a simple poll asking our readers if they would set facebook.com as their homepage. The result is in. Over one hundred responses were gathered.

      Out of those, 27 percent declared that they will set Facebook as their browser homepage. If Facebook were to pop the suggestion to all 500 million users, we would expect about 135 million users to follow suit.

      Of course, the sample size may not be representative but this survey does give us an estimated figure of enthusiastic users who are willing to make the switch.

      Here’s the thing, when users do make a switch, it is usually in the expense of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. With search engines’ web traffic down and Facebook’s up, the difference in traffic could double and amount to 270 million each day (assuming all 135 million users log on to the Internet on a daily basis). Most importantly, this move will alter web behavior. Instead of search, Facebook wants you to kickstart your daily Internet journey with your online social network.

      This is a subtle challenge from Facebook. The cold war between Facebook and Google continues. But one can surely predict a heated war to erupt in the near future.

Source from Penn Olson