Virgin won't Flash

Standards battles are often critical to competitive success; one of the key contests currently underway is over web standards for rich(er) content:

• Adobe's Flash - very widely used (YouTube, anyone), but (famously) not supported by Apple on the iPhone, and perceived by many as a major source of security weakenesses
• HTML5 - being advocated by Google
• Silverlight - Microsoft's proprietary technology

In a recent assessment, we concluded that Flash was so widespread, and the standard-setting process so slow, that it would be a very very long time before HTML5 became the dominant standard.
An interesting recent development suggests, however, that a reassessment might be worthwhile - we're always alert for these 'triggers' or early indicators of how different demand and business ecosystem scenarios evolve:

Start-up airline Virgin America has decided HTML is "good enough" for animating online content on its brand-new website, which went live Monday, dumping Flash.
...
It illustrates the options customers have between picking the closed Flash - or Silverlight from Microsoft - and open technologies such as HTML to serve content to a new generation of mobile computing devices.
Virgin picked HTML to give users of iPhones and other mobiles the option in the future of checking in through their phone. The battle between Adobe and Apple has seen Flash deliberately excluded from the Jesus Phone. 

Simhambhatla: iPhone, and other mobile, users welcome

Later, it highlights the value of Flash when you control the hardware:

"Flash provides beautiful interactivity," Simhambhatla said. "We wanted to bring a smoother application experience and modularity and be able to build up an interactive experience for the kiosk user - Flash is all these.
"Flash is really, really good, but as long as you can keep the hardware controlled...If the hardware you are trying to put your product on isn't [controlled] then Flash is questionable."

Facebook vs Google (2)

My colleague, Moe, posted a fascinating chart from Alexa.com comparing page views for Google and Facebook. I dug a little deeper and made three observations:

Users look at more pages on Facebook

Source: Alexa.comPeople spend more time on Facebook

Source: Alexa.comIt's facebook that has the link

Facebook's and Google's weekly battle for supremacy

About 18 months ago I was at a wedding on the West Coast with some folks from Google.  An interesting topic of conversation was about "Who could unseat Google?" and, generally, the importance of search.  A major theme of this discussion was about how as technology and user behavior changes, the leaders in one era rarely make effective transitions to become winners in the next era.

Google bested Webcrawler, Northern Lights, and other online search companies, but - more importantly - search beat out directories such as Yahoo! and AOL as the preferred way to find and access information on the Internet.  Our little group agreed that none of the search contenders (Ask.com, etc. - there was no Bing yet) had a chance.

I argued that social networking in general and Facebook in particular were the biggest threats.  Hours and hours of online activity are occurring on Facebook where Google has no sway, no advertising opportunities, and no information about what users are doing.  More importantly, Facebook is becoming an important mode of content discovery:  People recommend books, sneakers, music, and movies to their friends.  It is also becoming an important method for spreading breaking news.  Facebook is, for example, how I found out about the Ft. Hood shootings.

Today, I saw some extremely intereresting data on Alexa.com that shows how this battle is playing out.  The following chart shows how each week Facebook and Google flip-flop as the Internet leader in total pageviews.  Facebook rules on the weekend; Google rules during the week:

Each weekend Facebook passes Google in pageviews; during the week Google reclaims the lead

Source: Alexa.com

This has been going on since Facebook caught up to Google back in August:

Source: Alexa.com

Let me know what you think.  Will social networking displace search as the default approach to discovery on the Internet?  What are the implications for Facebook and Google if this occurs?

(By the way, this is the second time that Facebook caught Google in share of total pageviews.  The first time was during the 2008 Presidential Election.  After the election, Facebook's pageview share dropped precipitously and took about six months to recover to their prior level.)