Is MySpace conquering Web porn?
Study says social networking is now more popular than online porn
Porn is no longer king online, said Brian Osborne in Geek.com. Porn searches have dropped from 20 percent of queries 10 years ago to 10 percent today, according to Internet traffic expert Bill Tancer’s new book, Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why it Matters. With MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites pulling in more traffic, it’s nice to see people shifting away from “the dark part of the Internet.”
It’s a bit naïve to think that Web users are suddenly “so busy with MySpace that they don’t have time to look at porn,” said Dan Frommer in Silicon Alley Insider. “Serious porn seekers” might not be hunting on Google as much any more, but that’s only because they’ve moved on to “downloading hi-def Blu-ray rips or photo collections off BitTorrent.”
“I'm guessing Tancer has not visited many social networks,” said Robert X. Cringely in InfoWorld, “or that all his Facebook friends are old farts.” Because anybody between ages 18 and 24 knows that many of the profiles on social networks “ARE pornography.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Selling sex: why investors are wary of OnlyFans despite record profits
In The Spotlight The platform that revolutionised pornography is for sale – but its value is limited unless it can diversify
-
Garsington Opera opens its summer festival with two 'very different productions'
The Week Recommends A 'fabulous' new staging of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and Donizetti's fake-love-potion comedy L'elisir d'amore
-
The Rehearsal series two: Nathan Fielder's docu-comedy is 'laugh-out-loud funny'
The Week Recommends Television's 'great illusionist' has turned his attention to commercial airline safety