Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Fighting Facebook
Hello, good morning and welcome to Cybersurf, three minutes of your time EXCLUSIVELY for the internet. I am Steven Lang.
Pornography is not something we talk about very often on AM Live, but every now and so often we have to mention it on Cybersurf - after all - pornography was the main driver of internet growth in the early years - sometime in the last millennium.
Pornographic sites were the first to develop viable business models for selling content, and because of the widespread interest in dirty pictures, the internet was able to reach a critical mass.
For years pornography was the main driver of internet traffic - this is no longer true.
So, currently what do most people look for on the internet? I'll keep you guessing for a few more seconds.
The online edition of Time magazine says that in the United States, visits to porn sites have dropped from seventeen percent in October 2005 to twelve percent at the end of October in 2007. That is a drop of 33 percent!
Currently the THIRD most clicked-on category of sites is Search engines accounting for 11.6 percent: - FOURTH is web-based email services, then blogs followed by online news sites with a mere 1.5% of the clickability.
Of the 172 categories tracked by Hitwise - the number one generator of traffic is:
Social networking sites.
Yes, believe it or not teenagers and young adults now PREFER TO exchange inane messages rather than slobber over porn sites.
A few weeks ago we dedicated an entire edition of Cybersurf to Facebook; the leader in this category - but there are competitors out there.
The search engine 800 pound gorilla - Google - is busy putting together an alliance of competitors in an effort to face-off Facebook.
Google's own contribution - called Orkut has closed ranks with Hi5, Friendster, linkedIn and Plaxo - it sounds imposing, and we all know that things change rapidly on the internet - but the Google social networking alliance still has only one tenth the number of members of Facebook.
And of course Facebook makes it painful to migrate to an opposition site. The killer app in this context would be something that allowed the user to import all her FaceBook content to a newer, better social networking site.
Personally, I don't enjoy online social networking, but there are millions of people out there who spend an inordinate amount of time networking.
What we really need now is a survey about how much these sites cost the business sector. I know that some companies have already banned Facebook during office hours.
That's it from me Steven Lang, I have to go and check my messages now - yeah right. Thanks for listening and be sure to join me again next week, same time same place for more on the best of the web.
Pornography is not something we talk about very often on AM Live, but every now and so often we have to mention it on Cybersurf - after all - pornography was the main driver of internet growth in the early years - sometime in the last millennium.
Pornographic sites were the first to develop viable business models for selling content, and because of the widespread interest in dirty pictures, the internet was able to reach a critical mass.
For years pornography was the main driver of internet traffic - this is no longer true.
So, currently what do most people look for on the internet? I'll keep you guessing for a few more seconds.
The online edition of Time magazine says that in the United States, visits to porn sites have dropped from seventeen percent in October 2005 to twelve percent at the end of October in 2007. That is a drop of 33 percent!
Currently the THIRD most clicked-on category of sites is Search engines accounting for 11.6 percent: - FOURTH is web-based email services, then blogs followed by online news sites with a mere 1.5% of the clickability.
Of the 172 categories tracked by Hitwise - the number one generator of traffic is:
Social networking sites.
Yes, believe it or not teenagers and young adults now PREFER TO exchange inane messages rather than slobber over porn sites.
A few weeks ago we dedicated an entire edition of Cybersurf to Facebook; the leader in this category - but there are competitors out there.
The search engine 800 pound gorilla - Google - is busy putting together an alliance of competitors in an effort to face-off Facebook.
Google's own contribution - called Orkut has closed ranks with Hi5, Friendster, linkedIn and Plaxo - it sounds imposing, and we all know that things change rapidly on the internet - but the Google social networking alliance still has only one tenth the number of members of Facebook.
And of course Facebook makes it painful to migrate to an opposition site. The killer app in this context would be something that allowed the user to import all her FaceBook content to a newer, better social networking site.
Personally, I don't enjoy online social networking, but there are millions of people out there who spend an inordinate amount of time networking.
What we really need now is a survey about how much these sites cost the business sector. I know that some companies have already banned Facebook during office hours.
That's it from me Steven Lang, I have to go and check my messages now - yeah right. Thanks for listening and be sure to join me again next week, same time same place for more on the best of the web.
