Last week we provided the BBC with some interesting data illustrating how UK Internet visits to Social Networks and Forums have overtaken Adult websites. As the chart below illustrates, social networks overtook last October and have remained ahead since.

The BBC News article further discusses some of the trends relating to days of the week and video sites, but not demographics. As you would expect, Adult sites are notably more popular with men but almost 55% of visitors to our Social Networks and Forums category are female. Looking at the data by region, there isn’t a huge variation in the popularity of either adult sites or social networks.

In the US social networks first overtook adult sites in mid 2007, but since then the two categories have been battling it out with no clear winner emerging. Looking at the chart above, we may be in for a similar situation in the UK; social networks have stayed ahead of adult sites since overtaking them, but the gap hasn’t widened much in the last couple of months.

Adult sites and social networks are two of the topics discussed in “PPC – Porn, Pills and Casinos”, the first chapter “Click” by Bill Tancer. The book, which draws heavily on Hitwise data, is released in the UK next month. Over the next few weeks I’ll be highlighting some other topics that Bill discusses in his book, so keep an eye on the blog for more teasers.

Robin Goad

Robin Goad is Research Director, Hitwise UK. This piece was originally published on Hitwise analyst blog here.  

Image by vpjl