Social Media Won't Replace Search

Recent research carried out by Nielsen into the ways content was found through search engines and social media produced some interesting results.

"In a nutshell, there is a segment of the online population that uses social media as a core navigation and information discovery tool — roughly 18 percent of users see it as core to finding new information. While still a smaller percentage than those who use search engines or portals like Yahoo! or MSN, it is a significant figure," says Nielsen. "And as social media usage continues to increase (unique visitors to Twitter.com increased 959% year on year in August) I can only expect this figure to grow."

Overall, this research discovered that around 71% of online users find their desired content through search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing), 18% preferred to use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia, whilst the remaining 11% use a site that is dedicated to that type of information (Sky Sports for example).