While researching another topic (I swear) I found this article from one year ago that has some interesting information regarding Social Media and Porn. The Economist from April 19th 2007 reports that since the Internet really took off in the early 1990’s, pornography related activities dominated Internet use, at least since people started tracking those numbers.
By 2002 the National Research Council conservatively valued the online pornography industry at 1 billion dollars. I suspect the real number is much larger. Hitwise, a marketing research firm, reported that in 2006 13% of website visits in America were pornography related, nearly double the amount of search engine visits which stood at 7%. But apparently Internet porn climaxed that year because Hitwise further suggested that in the first few months of 2007 search sites and social media sites gained in popularity, surpassing sex sites for the first time. Research is indicating that people are moving on to sites that can be categorized as “net communities and chat”.
But in case you are concerned that porn’s return to number one will be long and hard, fear not. It should comes as no surprise that the industry, accused of killing beta, laser disk, and HD-DVD, would, after a brief refractory period, probe the social networking world as well. There are porn versions of StumbleUpon, YouTube, and Digg. On Wired.com recently, Regina Lynn discussed the Penthouse Media Group buyout of Various Inc, which is the parent company to many social networking dating sites including Adult Friend Finder and ironically, BigChurch, which is a Christian dating site. Recognizing that social media is huge, this is PMGI’s back door attempt to cash in on the craze.
I’m still not sure I want to call social media a revolution, but taking down porn is definitely a significant conquest.
Any thoughts?
Maury
