Porn no longer the most popular activity online

Canberra: Reflecting a major change in how people communicate, web users have started largely preferring social networking sites over porn sites, says writer Bill Tancer, who is also GM of global research at Hitwise, an Internet tracking company.

Tancer, a self-described 'data geek', reached this conclusion after analyzing information of over 10 million web users. Tancer, in his new book, 'Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters,' said analyzing web searches did not just reflect what was happening online but gave a wider picture of society and people's behavior.

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"One of the major shifts in Internet use in the past decade had been the fall off in interest in pornography or adult entertainment sites," Tancer said.

He said surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 percent of searches from 20 percent a decade ago, and the hottest Internet searches now are for social networking sites.

"There are some patterns to our Internet use that we tend to repeat very specifically and predictably, from diet searches, to prom dresses, to what we do around the holidays," Tancer told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"As social networking traffic has increased, visits to porn sites have decreased, it indicated that the 18-24 year old age group particularly was searching less for porn," he said.

Some of his findings give an indication of people's interests or emotions, with an annual spike in searches for anti-depression drugs around Thanksgiving time in the United States.

Tancer also said the change in communication patterns was one of the most noticeable shifts in society in the past five years - a key point for marketers seeking to learn about their audiences.

Tancer said the current obsession with celebrities was also reflected through web data, with celebrity websites garnering more attention than sites devoted to religion, politics, well-being and diets combined - and no sign that this is waning.