Move Aside, Adult Sites: Social Media Takes the Lead as the Most Popular Online Content

When I put together the chart in the Content Nation book a few months back showing how most of the top Web sites were social media Web sites, the stats that I was pulling from, like most industry stats, didn't list Web sites that post what is called in polite circles "adult entertainment." Taken in sum pornography is one of the most popular types of Web destinations, accounting for about 1 in 5 searches a few years ago, according to Hitwise. But in a Reuters article today it's noted that searches for porno sites are about half of what they were a few years ago and that the new leader in online surfing is social media sites.

Now I would be the first to trumpet this as progress in using the Web for building real relationships through social media, and I do believe strongly that social media is enabling people to build much more constructive relationships with one another than in ways that traditional media outlets have never facilitated very well. There's no doubt that social media is changing our attitudes towards other people through our own publishing, creating a global conversation that is staggering in its scope and its implications for our future.

However, it's also important to point out that many social media outlets are in their own ways havens for the behaviors that used to be found exclusively on adult Web sites. In Second Life , for example, some estimate that as much as half of spending in this virtual reality world is based on "adult interests," while a recent Wired article noted that on a recent day Sexy Beach, one of several regions in Second Life that offer virtual sex shops, dancing, and no-strings hookups, came in at 133,000, while major corporate locations in Second Life such as The Sears store on IBM's Innovation Island had a traffic score of 281 and Coke's Virtual Thirst pavilion only 27 visitors. Second Life's traffic has stagnated in the past year after its initial aggressive growth, in part, some speculate, because of its newcomer-hostile design, but perhaps people are finding better ways to connect with people than a world in which much of the activity seems to focus on selling of one kind or another rather than real person-to-person relationships. Tellingly, recent data from Second Life indicates that about 57 percent of its users are male and nearly half above the age of 35. It appears that this kind of fantasy world may be more appealing to mature adults.

By contrast, the social media sites that emphasize real-world relationships such as Facebook and LinkedIn continue to soar in popularity, underscoring that the real power in social media is its ability to help people form more multi-dimensional relationships with one another. Where traditional media continues to emphasize luring people into brand relationships with mass producers, social media helps people to be their own attractive brands that build up power one relationship at a time, even as traditional brands learn how to have a similar conversations. It's these kinds of social media properties that are the key for both marketers and for people trying to build geniune person-to-person relationships with one another. Social media is not going to change human behavior overnight - after more than a century of seduction-based advertising and programming through mass media people are going to re-program their interests only bit by bit - but already social media's ability to treat people as more than just consumers of mass-produced goods and entertainment is attracting people to Content Nation far faster than older forms of publishing. After all, who needs "Reality TV" when people make their own reality through their own content?