In web history, 2010 will be seen as an inflection point. It is the year that we moved from an information based web to a social web. Facebook traffic caught up to that of Google. Users are now spending around 25% of their online time within the walls of social networks thus enabling Facebook to serve up more display ads than any other site. This is a huge problem for Google. Here’s why…

Search engines have proven to be very successful at helping people find information that the masses deem to be important. However, in the social web, people don’t care about the masses. They care about what their friends and others like them deem to be important. With this in mind, Google is quickly trying to get social. Meanwhile, Facebook continues to get friendlier with search.

To be fair, this is not Google’s first foray into social. Despite introducing advancements in social communications, recent initiatives Wave and Buzz have failed. These failures are less a reflection on Google’s ability to understand the space, but more a reflection on their ability to layer in a hook to create a viral loop. The social graph’s viral loop is what made Facebook an essential communications tool for anyone on a college campus and now for anyone with an Internet connection.

It sounds like Google is learning from its previous challenges by bringing in outside expertise (enter Zynga and Slide), with deep connections to hundreds of millions of social users. However, in order to be successful in the social space (and overcome the network effect advantage Facebook currently holds), Google’s social platform will need to go beyond providing a deeper gaming experience. Google needs to present a new type of social utility whose value surpasses the switching costs for individual users, but most importantly provides enough incentive for users’ friends to migrate as well. It needs to create a new viral loop.

Meanwhile, Facebook is coming from the opposite direction. The user experience within Facebook has been traditionally driven by clicking on links and images. This is a function of social networking as users rely on their friends to serve up the important content. It is also a function of limited search functionality within Facebook.

Without an elaborate and tested search algorithm, Facebook is moving forward by betting on the collective wisdom of the crowd. By creating  Open Graph and launching Questions, it is leaving it up to users to decide what is important and what is relevant. In this world of user generated content, the quality of the source is less important than the user’s connection to the source. Time will tell whether users will find this type of content to be deep and accurate enough. Perhaps as established content providers continue to better integrate Facebook within their destination sites (350K+ have already installed “Like” buttons) and marketers continue to migrate their content within Facebook pages, social search may be good enough.

So as the kings of search and social step further onto each other’s turf, it is important to remember what has made them successful. Google has done three things better than anyone else: 1) created the most simplistic user experience (e.g., the Google homepage) 2) created the most popular search engine 3) created an industry changing “auction” based ad network. Meanwhile, Facebook has: 1) created the most popular social network 2) created social ads that allow marketers to connect with fans 3) created instant personalization to let users bring their Facebook identities across the web. What’s at stake now is billions of dollars of search and display advertising so expect both sides to exert serious efforts toward the advancement of their kingdoms.