What's the second-most important website on the Internet?

Thought question

[beren]

Let's say Google is the most important. What's number 2?

I'm talking about customer-facing websites and services, not infrastructure like Akamai and phone companies and ISPs and even AOL.

Some candidates:

Baidu
Yahoo
Ebay
Amazon
Bing
Facebook
Wikipedia

What do you think?

(Yes, this is an underdefined question. Please don't respond: “Do you mean by number of users or by influence or by....?” And “Does news.yahoo.com count as part of Yahoo?”.... I don't know. This is just for fun. Just make up your own criteria.)

[arieng]

I hate to say it, but Facebook could arguably be #1 with Google #2. If I had to go to #3, I'd say it was Amazon.

[brotherhood of LAN]

I'd consider Facebook a luxury rather than important. For spreading social info I think Twitter seems to have a more critical role.

2nd would be a news site, for me. The BBC.

[weeks]

Is Twitter really on the internet? Or, just sorta connected to it, on the side?

I would say AOL. Hahahahahahaha. Whew, I break myself up.

In news, The New York Times is coming to provide the content stream that makes more content streams. So, how important is news to the web? Probably not that much.

"Important" is interesting. Important to the web or the world? To the web? Yeah, Facebook, with Twitter probably deserving more votes than it would get. To the world? There is no website after Google that stands out. It just depends to much on the context of the use, but maybe Twitter.

[Leosghost]

youtube

[Samizdata]

Nobody mentioned WebmasterWorld?

...

[Leosghost]

OP asked for the second most ..not the first

[StoutFiles]

Because of news leaks and helping people communicate in difficult situations, it's Twitter sadly. Twitter is rather useful; it's just 95% of people who use it do so for moronic purposes.

[Swanny007]

If I'm making up my own criteria... Facebook #1.. then Google #2, then YouTube #3. ooops, I went too far LOL

[vivalasvegas]

Wikipedia and Youtube share the 2nd place.

[jecasc]

Google is definetly not the most important website on the internet. When Google would be gone tomorrow, the content would still be there.

The most important website on the internet is mine. At least for me.

[limoshawn]

+1 Jecasc

in my opinion the most important website on the internet is ehow. they have the future of the internet in their hands and a revenue stream/business to back it up. right now they are crap but most sites/businesses are in the beginning. they have the ability and incentive (money) to get bigger and better.
wikipedia is ehow without the money/revenue. they are crap and they have no incentive to get better, there's no money in non profit unless you're the guy at the top and i doubt that he can keep up with the edits...

[viggen]

for me the second most important website is paypal, without them it would be a real hassle to get money from remote places...

[Essex_boy]

Amazon I think.

[londrum]

i'd say twitter or facebook. they can actually start real-world revolutions, and help to oust governments, and not many sites can do that.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Lol, search engines are NOT the most important sites on the internet.

Want proof? Ok! Remove all other sites and what's left?

I personally don't think any site is more important than any other, it's people that matter. Wherever they want to hang out becomes important to them, everyone is different.