Place your bets: Its Facebook vs. Google in a war for control over the Web and, ultimately, your social life. A panel of social media experts at Beacon Hill's Vilna Shul: The Boston Center for Jewish Culture on Wednesday night sat down to discuss which company will emerge as Internet king over the coming years and the newer contenders, like Twitter and LinkedIn that have entered the ring.

Facebook and Google have developed into multi-billion dollar enterprises, but Rob Go, an investor in technology and co-founder of Next View Ventures, and other social media professionals debated which platforms will have staying power. Ayeah Games CEO Doug Levin, whose company develops social games for a variety of platforms, organized the panel.

Levin said he believes financial backing will give Google an advantage, at least for the next year or two. He went on to point out that Google currently generates about 20 times more revenue than Facebook. But, he added, if Facebook becomes a publicly traded company its share in the Web market will only increase.

"People really like the value of these social connections," said Mike Volpe, vice president of inbound marketing for HubSpot. "It's been pretty shocking to me how much Google has dropped in social space."

Because Facebook engages a network of users, it has managed to capitalize on dynamic social capabilities that Google has failed to replicate, said Lora Kratchounova, a Principal at Scratch Marketing and Media.  Google Buzz and Orkut – two Google products aimed at social networking – have failed to gain any traction. Google Buzz has also been criticized for privacy concerns.  Go said that Google operates in a silo approach: "You're going to throw a few things against the wall that won't stick."

Go expressed optimism that Google will evolve because the company has invested in a lot of interesting technologies. The launch of the Google Chrome Web browser was a success, and their email platform, Gmail, has been an industry leader for years. 

When it comes to the other players in the social network field, like Twitter and LinkedIn, the panelists agreed the platforms have significant value, but pointed out their limitations as well.

Several audience members commented that LinkedIn is not particularly "user friendly." And Volpe said that despite Twitter's huge popularity, the company has a big problem trying to figure out how to make its platform generate revenue.

Google and Facebook have generated major revenues from advertising and they have both capitalized on data collection, even though they use different methods for collecting data. Google's search algorithm calculates popularity based on how many times a Web site is referenced through Web links while Facebook tracks popularity based on what people say they like. 

"The link is being replaced by the 'like' [button]," Volpe said. 

But with all this emphasis on data collection, serious questions about privacy are coming up.

According to Ravi Mehta, Vice President of Product Management for Viximo, over 200,000 Web sites have installed Facebook widgets to track which items are of most interest to users. Teens and young adults have a much different perspective on using social media, he said. "They've grown up sharing information publicly."

Several panelists expressed concerns about privacy, particularly in areas where security might be compromised. "Your Web browsing history says a lot about you," Volpe said.  "There's a potential privacy storm."

Despite these concerns, Twitter, Facebook, and Google show no signs of slowing down, because they operate as social places, Mehta said.  He compared site visits to going to different restaurants.  "You can go to more than one," he said.

The Vilna Shul Speaker Series hosts an event each month (typically on Wednesday evenings) focused on a wide variety of topics including technology, journalism, arts and culture, and finance.  For more information about the series, visit http://www.vilnashul.org/index.php/info/the_vilna_shul_speakers_series/.