Facebook more popular than porn for UK users

[the_tyrant]

The internet research company says that in January sites like Facebook accounted for 12.46% of all online traffic.

That's the equivalent of 2.4 billion hits or one eighth of all web visits.

In comparison entertainment websites, including pornographic ones, accounted for 12.18% of traffic.

It's the first time social networking has overtaken entertainment in terms of popularity.

Of those, social network site Facebook accounted for more than half, or 56%, of visits.

Robin Goad, Experian Hitwise's Research Director said: "While social networks of course compete amongst themselves for users, many of those users have a presence on multiple networks.

"One in every eight people leaving a social network visits another one immediately after.

"Facebook, for example, is a key source of traffic for many smaller social networks, while almost a fifth of people leaving Twitter go on to visit another social network".

The news comes days after Facebook announced more than 30 million people in the UK had signed up as members.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/12784325

my opinion:porn is still the boss
the results are probably because users often refresh their facebook often, but the don't do that with porn
and you can only "hit" a porn site once or twice a day, your reproductive system cannot keep up with more
and the article failed to consider bittorrent

[Jimbuna]

Wouldn't really understand because I use neither...I have a Facebook account (I believe) but haven't used it in a looooooong time.

STEED is probably responsible for the high porn figures

[em2nought]

Been trying targeted advertising on Facebook, haven't seen any results yet.

[jumpy]

This is why I do not have a facebook account... er... hmm lol

[Herr-Berbunch]

I think the two need to amalgamate - porn on facebook, the true one-stop-shop (or one-shot-stop-shop...)

Then I wouldn't need to delete my history

[the_tyrant]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

I think the two need to amalgamate - porn on facebook, the true one-stop-shop (or one-shot-stop-shop...)

Then I wouldn't need to delete my history

Be proud of what you do on the internet!

lol, when i do things that I do not want others to know about, I use a browser that I made myself when I started to learn Visual Basic .net

I was so awful at it at the time i'm i wasn't even able to add a history feature!

it doesn't have flash, but I simply download the files

[bookworm_020]

What? There is a difference between porn and facebook?????

[Betonov]

Well, you cant really watch porn while there are other people in the room, while you can do that with FB. the running time is higher with FB, but the shere concentration with porn is alot higher, but the bulk of the traffic is only in the evening, nightime

[jumpy]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

I think the two need to amalgamate - porn on facebook, the true one-stop-shop (or one-shot-stop-shop...)

Then I wouldn't need to delete my history

According to my hotmail spam box, there's already a '****book' ...it's always advertising 'hot women in your area!'

load of rubbish, they've obviously never seen some of the women near where I live; can you say 'boiler'?

[Skybird]

Facebook more popular than porn for UK users

With that kind of national cuisine my brain would shrink even more, too!

[Skybird diving for full cover]

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by jumpy

According to my hotmail spam box, there's already a '****book' ...it's always advertising 'hot women in your area!'

load of rubbish, they've obviously never seen some of the women near where I live; can you say 'boiler'?

reminds me of a quote from the series Rome: the men are quite fond of fuc*** sheep and when you see their women you understand why

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

STEED is probably responsible for the high porn figures

Steed has a porn site? And people actually visit it?

The mind boggles.

[jumpy]

Originally Posted by Betonov

reminds me of a quote from the series Rome: the men are quite fond of fuc*** sheep and when you see their women you understand why

c'mon now, leave the welsh out of this one

[Castout]

Facebook more popular than porn for UK users

Now we know where UK internet users get their porn from

[Penguin]

What a crappy article from a "technology reporter". He mixes hits, page views, visits; web traffic and online traffic. BBC would have done better to link to the original article rather than having a confused writer report about it.

Originally Posted by the_tyrant

the results are probably because users often refresh their facebook often, but the don't do that with porn
and you can only "hit" a porn site once or twice a day, your reproductive system cannot keep up with more
and the article failed to consider bittorrent

When you refresh a page and new content is available and gets loaded, you gain new "hits". Probably the average facebook page becomes more often filled with new content than the average porn page.
You're also mixing hit with page impression in your example - I'll leave the rest of your statement uncommnted.
Is bittorrent still this popular? Here the amount of web traffic caused by torrents is becoming less. Has certainly something to do with streaming sites and prosecution of illegal torrents.
However the article only speaks about web traffic, so in this case it is fine to leave other traffic out.

And please do change you sig! the strobe effect is really annoying when you read something static like a text and you see something blinking all the time. If you have something important to say in your sig, write a text into it! Thanks!