For the first time in this millenium, Google has been displaced as the #1 accessed website in South Africa – that honour now goes to Facebook, according to Alexa’s stats.

I’ve been reading up elsewhere, and it seems that Facebook is the #4 accessed site in the world – I’m anxiously looking forward to hearing about their advertising platform plans – if they can crack the demographic targeting it will become interesting.

On another note, it seems that Google may have outsmarted Microsoft, according to this article and backed up by reports on TechCrunch today that Google is planning to launch their own social network. If so, it was a smart moving on Google’s part by being a shill bidder at an auction with Microsoft holding the buyer’s remorse cap!
Steve Ballmer has said that 25% of Microsoft’s revenue will eventually come from advertising – that would be an impressive turnaround to see – given that the current number is 5% – the Facebook deal is obviously just the first step on that path.

I really like what Google is apparently planning on doing with their open API’s – and given Google’s background in pageview monetization, Facebook have an uphill battle on their hands to actually make money and justify their valuations.

Are we in a bubble? No. Are valuations high? Yes – but only because the paradigm of small domestic markets is dead – the Internet is a global marketplace of goods & services with over 1bn participants actively contributing to the growth in some way. The startups of today are justifying valuations on the back of solid business plans and proven revenue models and they are no longer limited to their own geographies.

Web 2.0 is turning out the way Web 1.0 was supposed to go, but wasn’t ready for it…