Social networks now more popular than porn

This all according to Bill Tancer, Hitwise's general manager of global research and author of a new book called Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters. In his book, Tancer says that web searches for social networking sites have finally surpassed searches for pornography.

Apparently, his book sheds some light on how people communicate these days and gives us a up-to-date glimpse of how society behaves. Tancer sifted through data reflecting online habits from over 10 million web users and concluded that social networking sites are the hottest attraction on the Internet--as if we couldn't have figured that out for ourselves.

The self-proclaimed "data geek" says searches for pornography have decreased to 10 percent compared to the 20 percent we saw a decade ago. Young people between the ages of 18 and 24, in particular, are spending more time on Facebook and less time searching for adult entertainment sites. That ought bring some relief to parents and flight attendants worried about passengers tuning in to porn sites in mid-air.

In terms of behaviour, Tancer says his study also shows searches for anti-depression drugs spike around Thanksgiving, people are more interested in tropical storms since Katrina, and searches for Palin's pictures are higher than searches for her policies. Other interesting tidbits mentioned in his book are that people fear ceiling fans, elbows, and belly button lint just as much as they fear social intimacy and rejection. How's that for strange?

Link: Porn passed over as Web users become social (Reuters)

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