Is Facebook Killing Porn? (Answer: Probably Not)

Trend story alert! Thanks to Bill Tancer’s new book “Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters,” news outlets everywhere have taken a break from talking about how pornography innovates and drives the internet and are now talking about how it’s being brutally smashed by social networking phenoms like MySpace and Facebook. Because clearly, people would much rather buy each other virtual flowers than watch Sasha Grey get fucked in the ass! Needless to say, we’re not totally convinced by Tancer’s super compelling argument. Granted, we haven’t seen his data, but the simple claim that searches for porn have dropped from 20% of all searches to 10%, and that social networks are now the dominant search theme, isn’t enough to get us preparing for a grand ol’ porno funeral. Allow us to explain …There’s more of the internet than there used to be. As the internet grows, matures, and spreads into homes across America, it’s only natural that porn would become a smaller percentage of all the content out there — not because porn is less popular, but because it’s gone from being a big fish in a small pond to a big fish in a very, very large pond. Social networks are work friendly. You (probably) can look at Facebook while you’re slacking off at work. You (probably) can’t look at Fleshbot. Does that mean that you like Facebook better than Fleshbot? We’ll let you think on that one. Social networks are kid friendly. We hear the kids are big into the internet these days — and they also really like the MySpace. Chances are, their parents are going to be more okay with them looking at MySpace or Facebook rather than porn. And the more that kids become heavy internet users, the more these numbers are going to get skewed. Adult sites are vastly more profitable than social networks. Unlike Facebook, most porn sites have figured out some decent ways to monetize their traffic (even with smaller users bases). Somehow, we think the money is going to have the final word on this one. · “Facebook and MySpace are Killing Porn?” (mashable.com) · “Porn passed over as Web users become social” (reuters.com)