from http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1678586,00.html
(Thanks Kay)
SCIENCE OF SEARCH
Facebook: More Popular Than Porn
By BILL TANCER
When I wrote last week’s column comparing the social-networking sites MySpace and Facebook, I included a line after my signature stating that I had only 124 friends on Facebook, and urged readers to add me as their friends. As of today I have 261 new Facebook friends, the majority of which are Generation Y college students.
I turned to Hitwise data to find out more about them. By examining which websites social-network users visit after logging into their profiles, we can gain a bit of insight into how sites like Facebook fit into their members’ daily online lives. The data showed that after other social networks, the most clicked-on category of sites was search engines, with 11.6% of all downstream visits. Web-based e-mail services were next with 8.5%. Blogs came in third in popularity at 6.1%, claiming more than four times the number of visits to traditional news sites, which logged 1.5% of downstream visits.
Perhaps a more interesting — and more accurate — way to figure out where college students are going online is to assess which of the 172 web categories tracked by Hitwise get the most hits from 18- to 24-year-olds. Here’s a shocker: Porn is not No. 1. I’ve actually been puzzled by the decrease in visits to the Adult Entertainment category over the last two years. Visits to porn sites have dropped from 16.9% of all site visits in the U.S. in October 2005 to 11.9% as of last week, a 33% decline. Currently, for web users over the age of 25, Adult Entertainment still ranks high in popularity, coming in second, after search engines. Not so for 18- to 24-year-olds, for whom social networks rank first, followed by search engines, then web-based e-mail — with porn sites lagging behind in fourth. If you chart the rate of visits to social-networking sites against those to adult sites over the last two years, there appears to be a strong negative correlation (i.e., visits to social networks go up as visits to adult sites go down). It’s a leap to say there’s a real correlation there, but if there is one, then I’d bet it has everything to do with Gen Y’s changing habits: they’re too busy chatting with friends to look at online skin. Imagine.
This reshaped online landscape leaves me feeling old and out of the loop. It seems that social-networking sites have not only usurped porn in popularity, but they’ve also gobbled up time Gen Y-ers used to spend on traditional e-mail and IM. When you can reach all of your friends through Facebook or MySpace, there’s little reason to spend time in your old-school inbox. So, if social networking is becoming e-mail 2.0, then perhaps Microsoft’s recent $240 million dollar payout for such a small stake in Facebook isn’t that ridiculous.
The reality is that Facebook isn’t just for kids. Last week — and this was a highlight — my dad, who just turned 75, added me as a friend on Facebook. I considered sending him a virtual beer to celebrate the occasion, but I didn’t think either of us would see the point. Back in my day, we drank beers out of bottles and cans — we didn’t have these new-fangled virtual beers. But, then again, I think that’s something I probably still have in common with the younger generation, something I don’t need Hitwise data to back up: the love of a good old-fashioned beer.
Let the messages roll in.
Bill Tancer is general manger of global research at Hitwise
Yes thank you Kay. Now show us your tits and ass please.
Colonel you haven’t earned it yet!
Believe me lady, the Colonel has earned it.
Kay, I not only earned it, I well deserve it, so does BDD, Larry, Jed, Rics, etc. We are a group of gentlemen and we want to be entertained. Oh yeah.
Al, you copycat bipolar fuck, I hope you’re dead by now, but if you’re still alive and reading this, fuck you, you’re not a gentleman like me and my friends, you’re a masturbating thieving monkey.
Come back here and dance for me, you dirty rotten imbecile. You work for me now.
Sorry Colonel I only do privet parties…so it’s either you or one of the other boys. Take your pick! You may have earned it with a porn girl, but come on guys I’m a civilian, you have to wine me and dine me!
Kay, in that case I’ll bring my video camera to our private party and film you so I can show it to boys.
Trust me, porn girls off the camera and in real life are not very different from civilians, you have to wine and dine them, too.
“Sorry Colonel I only do private parties…so it’s either you or one of the other boys.”
Ar you some sort of civilian escort?
The Colonel says –
“Trust me, porn girls off the camera and in real life are not very different from civilians, you have to wine and dine them, too.”
I thought you just cut them a check and they had sex with you and for you?
Also, I thought Christian was the only guy who bought his talent lunch or dinner after?? Huummm??
PS rics – in my life I would eat boys like you for breakfast!
lol kernel.. being gay again? i like when bitches dance for me… gay men want other men to dance for them lol
Kay, I love taking out ladies to lunch and dinner, I just don’t take pictures of my food. There’s nothing wrong with being a gentleman.
Al, I knew you’d be back, you little turd. I really enjoy fucking with you.
PS: What is with the picture of dog as your avatar, you stupid fuck? You expect people to take you seriously with this retarded behaviour? Do I have to jam my fist up your ass and teach you everything?
I’m gonna go grab a beer, and by the time I come back I expect to read something funny from you, my little clown monkey. Come on, put your ass to work.
“Do I have to jam my fist up your ass and teach you everything?”
this gay shit is getting too bizarre for me kernel… no don’t teach me and gay shit, in fact take your sexual tension out on another man
Al, don’t be afraid, my fist has been up many asses, I know how to do this right. You’re not gonna break any hemorrhage. Plus, I’ll buy you a beer afterward.
i’m at a loss right now
A loss? What happened to you, man?
Al, get back here and tell me what happened. You were happy like a clam because of Obama’s inauguration , and then suddenly you’re at a loss. Honestly I hope you’re well. I’m assuming you were too tired or just forgot to take your happy pills.
I’ve never had a man express his desire to put his fist up my ass, and to add very creepy insult to injury (or is it the other way around), top it off by offering to buy me a beer afterward. What happened to you is the question.
Al, I didn’t expect this from you. You have to distinguish the thick line between fact and humor.
Glad you’re alright, though.
“PS rics – in my life I would eat boys like you for breakfast!”
Now we are talking, any agency in particular. And do not tell me it was Bellamodels or Nicis Girls!
that was an attempt at humor?
Yes, you idiot fuck. I was joking with you. Not that I can’t jam my fist up your ass just for the hell of it, but the other night that was supposed to be a joke. For someone who writes jokes about jerking off and getting pissed at, you’re really not very good at drawing the line between fact and humor, are you?
Alofonso Retardo Stupido.
Or LA Direct, that would made the past defences of the Trannyfucker easier to understand. Unless you are…….. No, no, cannot be. She does not seem to have that sense of humour.
Please rics I have had this fight with e-is-for-eric. You can believe what you want, but I am not in your business and I have never met or am related to Christian.
And defending Christian is easy to do when I am dealing with simpletons.
Too much Pabst for kernel that night
Damm Kay, you have no senso of humour, I was intrigued by the possibility you being someone else who posts a lot in incest/rape sites and used to work in Pimpwich before the Trannyfucker^s times. She often uses handles with obscure fine arts related references and she also has your circunspect and asertive style of writting.
And since she is not a friend of the Earl, I would have find her defence of Trannyfucker highly satyric.
Too bad it wasnt.
That means no private parties? The hobbyist are disappointed.
rics I have a wonderful sense of humor. But I am not sure, should I be insulted or flattered that you think my writing is circumspect and assertive.
Also what is
“handles with obscure fine arts related references???”
Are you talking about my name as my handle? Sorry to disappoint but it is just my name!
I like the usage of the words circumspect and satyric
That is your real name, sorry I thought it was the name of a contemporary poet. My mistery girl often uses arts references in her handles. And she is intelligent, college educaded and a young mother. But she is still dealing with the aftermath of suffering pychological, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her father growing up or have been in the sex industry is several “jobs”. And she often likes to play mind games.
huum, again I’m not sure how to take that. Kay Ryan the poet is a beautiful writer but I can only hope to aspire to write like that.
I am intelligent, college educated, but I’m an OLD mother!
Off to Mexico….have fun here!