Today’s TV on Tuesday is a TED Talk by James Surowiecki, finance writer for the New Yorker and author of The Wisdom of the Crowds. He pinpoints the moments that social media became as relevant and informational as traditional news (such as the 2005 tsunami or the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes) and how it may even trump traditional media in its ability to preserve personal stories in their most direct form.  How do you get your news these days? Is it from social media (tweets, Facebook updates, and the like) or more traditional sources (such as the New York Times)?

Just how many of us have a Facebook account in the world? To even think about it you know the number is going to be astronomical; the question is “who doesn’t have a Facebook account?”  By December 2009, Facebook single handedly attracted 469 million visitors, putting them at the No.4 most viewed website in the world.  Sound like just a number to you?  More than 31 million people signed onto Facebook in December 2009 then in November – Yahoo had 31 million viewers in the entire year of 2009.  That’s right, Facebook had that many hits in just thirty-one days.  The social networking site is quickly climbing the ladder to becoming the third largest Web property in the world (booting out Yahoo as number three, and closely behind Google (No.1) and Microsoft (No. 2)).

All in all, Facebook has grown by almost 250 million viewers in 2009.  If Facebook continues to attract this number of people, it will surely pass Yahoo as the third most viewed website in the world by the end of 2010.  But how many viewers does it need to take on the No.2 and No.1 websites? To pass Microsoft, Facebook would need well over 727 million hits worldwide, and Google of 899 million viewers, which may take more time then the 11 months left to 2010.

On the other hand, Facebook surpasses both Yahoo and Microsoft in many other aspects.  For example, Facebook’s page views grew an estimated 141% last year to 193 billion in December, Yahoo only received 100 billion while Microsoft pulled in 109 billion.  Although Facebook passed these two head honchos, Google still holds the top spot for 274 billion a month. When all’s said and done, Facebook is making exceptional growth in today’s market of most viewed websites. So keep checking out your friends, updating your status and pictures, and let’s move Facebook to the number three spot!

We’ve all heard of Facebook, MySpace, Linked In, and Twitter.  Maybe you have an account on one or the other, or even all four.  You, with millions of other users, are along the ride of being available 24/7 to have friends, family members, and other networks to see your information, profile, and pictures.  Now being able to share posts on your daily life exercises and thoughts, we- as a social networking obsessed world- are now officially spend 82% more time on these sites compared to the amount of time we put just a year earlier.

So much time that some of us are putting in the number of hours equivalent to a full-time job – a full-time job that doesn’t take a break on weekends. If the average person spends around five and a half hours a day, seven days a week, that leads one to a little shy of forty hours. Didn’t think you spent that much time each week, did you?

And it’s not just the United States that is infatuated with social networking. Australia, Switzerland, Brazil, Japan, Italy, Spain, and the entire U.K is shortly behind us. In Fact, the US may have the most people belonging to these groups, but Australians have the lead for times-per-day visits. Around the globe, people are interested in having people follow them and have people interested in what they are doing; all day, everyday.  Are we in a self-obsessed world, or just a world that loves to communicate with each other? With social networking up by 82% from last year, how much longer will it be before all of our time is spent on the computer?