Porn V Social networking

Source: Reuters website

Just read an interesting article by Belinda Goldsmith at Reuters that reports social networking sites are the hottest attraction on the Internet, even, dare I say it, dethroning pornography. 

Her article is based around research released by Bill Tancer, in his new book, “Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters”.  Bill believes that by analysing web searches it is possible to not just reflect what is happening online but gave a wider picture of society and people’s behavior.  “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.

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.

“As social networking traffic has increased, visits to porn sites have decreased,” said Tancer, indicated that the 18-24 year old age group particularly was searching less for porn.  My theory is that young users spend so much time on social networks that they don’t have time to look at adult sites.”

The changing role of PR as media evolves

Source: blog talk radio website

While catching up on some reading this afternoon I saw a blog by social media expert Jennifer Leggio on ZDNet about a forthcoming Blog Talk Radio discussion on The Changing Role of Public Relations as Media Evolves.

Jennifer will be joining host Al Krueger, Todd Defren and Nicole Jordan, for a conversation about how public relations needs to change as media changes, the added responsibilities, best practices of working with bloggers and so on. Some specifics she states as areas she’d like to see revisited:

• Establishing PR best practices for engaging with bloggers
• What is PR’s “elevator pitch?”
• Holding bloggers accountable (yes, we need accountability, too)
• Teaching bloggers how to benefit from PR relationships

The post explains that the discussion hosted by Comet Branding, will be streamed via Blog Talk Radio at 9 a.m. PT on Wednesday, Oct. 22, and they’ll take guest callers throughout the hour. 

If you have some spare time it could be worth a listen as I have been impressed by the work of all involved.