Americans prefer socializing on Facebook to searching for information on Google or looking up videos on YouTube. For the first time since its inception, Facebook beat out Google for a full week as the most visited site in the U.S.  That is the word from online tracking firm comScore. 

Data from the research company indicates that during the month of August, Americans spent 41.1 million minutes on Facebook while spending just 39.8 million minutes on all Google sites combined. 

Nearly 10 percent of internet users across the U.S. use Facebook versus 9.6 percent for internet giant Google. Facebook has only one domain while the Google umbrella includes Google News, YouTube, Gmail and other sites, according to the New York Post and International Business Times.

"Internet users are spending more time posting photographs, updating status messages and scrolling through news from friends which is rivaling everything else people do online," said comScore.

This increase is significant as Google led by 12 percent just last year.  Internet users spent five percent of their time on the social networking site in August 2009 and less than two percent on Facebook in 2007 according to comScore.

BDST: 1355 HRS, 14 September 2010