POLITICO NEW YORK — New York Times technology columnist and editor-at-large Nicholas Kristof said Friday that Facebook has been on a path to become the Google of online social networking for a decade, and has already overtaken Google in terms of popularity and market share.
Kristof, who has worked for the Times for nearly three decades, said the company has been able to capture an extraordinary amount of users and users have increasingly come to rely on social media.
Facebook has a larger user base, he said, and that gives it more room to grow, as well as greater flexibility to innovate.
He said Facebook has already surpassed Google in the use of social media platforms, which has led to a broader shift in users and advertisers on social networks.
Facebook’s user base has grown from 5.5 billion to 12 billion people and the number of users on its network has more than doubled, Kristof told CNBC.
Kristof said that while there have been some “big-data” trends on Facebook, it’s also become “a little more of a digital network” with its ability to connect users with people who use it.
Facebook’s use of machine learning to make it more user-friendly and personal has helped it become more accessible, he added.
It also has been an effective advertising platform, as it’s helped to make ads more relevant and engage users in a more personal way, Kristoff said.
But, Kristoffer said, Facebook is also a bit of a pioneer in what’s called machine learning.
He said it’s not just that Facebook is a great user experience, but that Facebook can be used for other things as well.
He said the most interesting thing about Facebook is how it is now an ecosystem and it’s all about using machine learning for the right reason.
The company is now making machine learning into a platform that people can use to make advertising more relevant to people and they’re creating that platform to make people more productive and efficient at social media, he explained.
Kristoffer said Facebook’s ability to leverage machine learning has made it easier for it to become a platform for other platforms as well, as more users use the service and advertisers start to see value in it.
Kristof pointed to advertising for games and other digital content as a major example of this.
As more users are using the service, Facebook can create more value for advertisers in that space, he noted.
One area where Facebook’s machine learning capabilities have allowed it to gain a competitive advantage over Google is in social video, he told CNBC, noting that it now has the most users watching and watching more videos than YouTube, which is still the dominant video platform.
However, Facebook also has some serious competitors in the social media space.
Google dominates social video advertising with over $100 billion in revenue.
And Facebook has recently taken a huge lead in online ads.
Kristoff also pointed out that while Google has been around for a long time, it is not the only company with a large presence in the online video space.
He cited YouTube, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix as other giants in the space.
He also pointed to YouTube as a prime example of a company that has gone through a transition from being a big content platform to becoming a service provider.
He noted that YouTube has been one of the biggest winners of the internet, but the company is also trying to move beyond YouTube and make its service more like YouTube TV.
Kristoffs prediction that Facebook will overtake Google as the social network of choice for many users and a dominant one for advertisers is based on the company’s recent record.
In March, Facebook said it had sold 1.4 billion video views to advertisers in the first nine months of 2016, which was up from 1.1 billion in the same period last year.
Krists prediction that social video will overtake YouTube as the primary way that users and marketers access content and social media in the future is based more on the fact that Facebook now has an audience that is much larger than the size of YouTube, he emphasized.
Kristers prediction that the company will dominate social media is also based on what he called the company s rapid growth over the past decade.
That is based in part on the success of Facebook, which he noted was a success primarily because of the power of its network and the fact it is a company built to be an innovator and an investor.
According to Krists prediction, Facebook will dominate video for many years to come.