IT Buoy

Are Americans now more likely to get content from their friends than random Web sites that they wouldn’t be able to find on their own? AFP/Getty Images The Internet homepage of the social media Web site Facebook That’s one of the implications of a report out Monday by Internet research company Hitwise, which found that Facebook passed Google as the most visited Web site in the U.S. last week. Facebook just squeaked by the search giant, as visits to the social-networking site made up 7.07% of all Web visits compared with 7.03% for Google. But that was enough to knock Google out of the top spot for the first time since the week ending Sept. 15, 2007. One reason for Facebook’s success is features that make it easy to share information and online content with friends, says Matt Tatham, director of media relations at Hitwise.

Note: This post was originally published on OPEN Forum . It is republished here with permission. By now you’ve probably read or heard of stories of employees getting fired or tweeting their way out of a job offer , by saying inappropriate things on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine continues to gain share in the search market , thanks to organic growth, lots of advertising, and clever tricks like stuffing MSN.com full of links to Bing search queries . Read the rest of this story

Google announced last night that it is officially opening its Google Apps Marketplace — a store for online business software that works with Google’s products but is designed by outside developers. AFP/Getty Images The internet homepage of the British version of the search engine Web site Google As the Journal’s Jessica Vascellaro and Nick Wingfield reported last month , the store is Google’s “latest attempt to get customers to switch to its online offerings and away from Microsoft programs.” In a post on its blog , Google said it was creating the store in part because “there are hundreds of business applications for which we have no particular expertise.” The company, which said more than 50 businesses were now selling applications in the store, also highlighted a few of the initial offerings, including an online payroll application from Intuit and a free project-management application called Manymoon.

Along with 50 initial partners, Manymoon , the social productivity start-up that makes one of the more popular tools on Google’s apps platform, has joined the Google Apps Marketplace store rollout at the search giant’s Campfire One developer event tonight. Manymoon’s exec spoke at the event, along with Intuit (INTU), Atlassian and Appirio. (You can watch the event here .) The San Francisco company, funded with only a seed funding round by Harrison Metal, offers an online collaboration app that businesses or consumers can use to organize group projects, conversations, tasks and documents that are often done via email or software. Manymoon is rather typical of the innovative apps makers the search giant has been courting to populate its marketplace. Before the Google (GOOG) announcement, BoomTown made this video of an interview with co-founders Amit Kulkarni and Manav Monga about the interesting space: [ See post to watch video ]