Who ever would have thought that so many of us spend our Christmas Eve on the web? Back in the day we waited until we were back at work or school to go online (CyberMonday was premised on that fact). Those days have long since gone.
On Christmas Day 2007 Facebook reached a peak in traffic that wasn’t surpassed until July 2008. Traffic reached a new high on Christmas Eve 2008 when Facebook saw its highest ever traffic level – reaching 2.18% of all US Internet visits compared with 1.42% average for November. The site reached a ranking of 5th among All Categories of websites (compared to 8th for November). This represents a 54% increase on 24th December 2008 compared with the average for November and a 53% increase year on year.
Whether it was more broadband connections or simply bad weather, many popular web services saw a nice bump in their traffic this holiday season. In US, YouTube accounted for about 1.35% of total US traffic on December 24, though the traffic skidded there after to 1.16% on December 31. Nevertheless, on the new year’s eve, the traffic was up 33% from 2007.
In other Facebook news, they’re suing Power.com, a start-up based in Brasil that gives users access to several social networks and messaging clients at once.
LATER: Joe Subday points to a Gallup poll finding 48% of Americans spend more than an hour on the internet each day.