Prompt's TechBlog

In what seems like a telling indication of the evolution from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, the Economist reported last Friday (subscription required) that social networking is set to become a more popular online activity than ye traditional internet pastime of looking at porn.

It quoted figures from internet monitoring firm Hitwise, showing visits to 'adult' sites falling from 14% of all US web traffic in May 2006 to 11% in Feb 2007, while visits to online social networking sites, such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo rose from 7% of total visits to just over 10% in the same period.

The nature of the underlying trend here is, however, debatable. The Economist points out that it doesn't mean we're tired of carnal pleasures: a lot of activity in social networking environments is based on the pursuit of sexual encounters of one sort (e.g. finding a new partner through Facebook*) or another (e.g. getting it on with someone else's avatar in Second Life).

All we've done, according to the magazine, is move from passively looking at saucy things online to actively doing saucy things online.

(Web 2.0, after all, is all about participation.)

But in amateur Freakonomics stylee, I'm wondering if these figures can't be correlated with another set of figures that came to light recently. eMarketer reported on the 9th April that female US internet users now outnumber males, and may even have done so since last year.

While I've no stats to back it up, I suspect that a great many more female internet users are interested in socialising than in looking at porn. So whether Hitwise's figures spell the end for the online porn industry, or simply illustrate the shifting online gender balance, may be debatable.


* Which, according to this survey by Mashable, is the second most likely online social network to get you laid...

Labels: web 2.0