It seems Facebook has one goal in mind, as it’s now heading towards getting users to make it their default homepage. The social network is taking the ‘portal approach.’  Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft did the same a decade ago, and it’s the same tactic Google is after, with a heady consumer-driven campaign.

“Facebook’s push to make its site people’s Internet starting point of choice will only heighten its rivalry with search leader Google as the two battle for user traffic, as well as the user data…Facebook’s site has started to feature a bar at the top of some people’s pages prompting them to set the site as their homepage.”

This bar is expected to be rolled out to all 500 million Facebook users throughout the next few weeks, and increase the social network’s last quarter 6% share of primary homepages in the U.S.  Facebook’s attention on increasing the ‘value’ of existing users is not routed in vain, as the largest social network’s traffic is up 60% between Nov. 2009 and Nov. 2010. According to Experian Hitwise, Facebook accounts for 25% of all page views and 10% of all internet visits in the world.  These figures can justify any speculation that Facebook is trying to take over the web, especially in light of its recent moves to attract even more users.

As we mentioned, Facebook has recently made some changes to make the social network more personal for users. That includes filtering messages based on user relationships with Social Mail, seamless messaging and relationship-specific conversation histories. These updates are in addition to the array of features the social network has to offer, making up a hefty percent of the activity surrounding Facebook’s 500 million users.