Social networks are huge traffic generators. The big problem for Facebook and other social networks isn't how to get traffic, but how to take the massive amount of traffic they receive and turn those visitors into money for the site and shareholders.

Despite the issues with security and privacy that some users have with Facebook, the site is growing by leaps and bounds. Reuters reports that Facebook has officially beat out Google.com as the most visited website on the web. Facebook had 8.9% of all web visitors in the U.S. between January and November 2010 while Google.com grabbed 7.2% of all visits. The new stats come from online measurement service Experian Hitwise.

Facebook has been able to grow at an astonishing rate given the short six years that the site has been online. Facebook is the largest social network with roughly half a billion users around the world. During the time when Facebook was young, the largest social network was the now troubled MySpace and Google had the most visits of any site online.

Reuters points out that if you factor Google web properties like YouTube and the Gmail service into the picture, Google is the most visited site with 9.9% of web visits. Facebook would then be in second place with Yahoo and its associated properties in third with 8.1% of visits from U.S. online users.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was also chosen as Time’s Person of the Year for 2010.