The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article today about results posted by Compete Inc. showing that Facebook has passed up Google as the largest source of traffic for Yahoo and MSN portals as well as other sites.

“People are spending less time navigating the Internet on their own and are now navigating the Internet based on their friends’ recommendations or their friends’ activities.”

-Dave Yovanno, chief executive of Gigya Inc. (a Palo Alto firm that offers social-media services)

Intuit has gotten in on the social media frenzy, calling its way of getting customers to refer friends “friend-casting.” Heck, they don’t need to trick me into advertising for them—I’ll do it for free. I’ll be getting my largest return by far this year and it took less than an hour using their TurboTax Freedom Edition, which lets you file your federal and state taxes for free if you qualify.

Alright Intuit, let’s see how many referrals you get from this social media buzz.

Check out the full article (about Facebook, not TurboTax) here: Facebook directs more online users than Google.