Reports on WebUser today show that traffic to social networking sites outstripped that for search engines for the first time ever. According to the WebUser article, Facebook accounted for 55 per cent of all UK-based social networking traffic while Google led from the search side. So does this mean that the muted social search is actually gaining traction?

It’s often been argued (and I agree) that social networks are increasingly used as a source for news – both news on what their network is up to and more general news. However, I don’t think that people naturally gravitate to social networks with the intention on searching for news or information – I think they just find it there. And there’s a reason for that – they’re tapping into to a highly relevant pool of their friends and contacts that are naturally sharing information that’s interesting to them.

So, what am I getting at? Social networks are becoming one-stop information sharing points. While people don’t specifically head to Facebook to search for something, they might find that they are naturally being served with information that slowly but surely makes that search list smaller and smaller, probably without the individual actually being aware of it.