Porn is and always has been a key component of the Internet -- 10% of all Web searches, according to Hitwise. But it used to be bigger -- and could be getting displaced by social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Reuters:

[Bill] Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, an Internet tracking company, said one of the major shifts in Internet use in the past decade had been the fall off in interest in pornography or adult entertainment sites.

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."

For argument's sake, let's say Tancer's stats are accurate. We still have a hard time with his analysis -- that people are so busy with MySpace that they don't have time to look at porn. Instead, we think the answer has to do with the growth of the Web, and other changes in the way people use the Web. Fleshbot's Lux Alptraum -- link probably not safe for work -- takes a stab at it:

• The Internet is bigger than it used to be, and more people are using it, especially kids, so it makes sense that relatively fewer people are looking at porn.
• You can look at Facebook at work, while you probably can't look at porn at work. (And you're definitely more likely to be using the Web at work than you were ten years ago.)
  

But we'd also add that porn on the Internet is probably deceasingly a Web activity, and probably increasingly a non-Web activity. Serious porn seekers, who might have looked on AltaVista for smut ten years ago, aren't necessarily looking on Google today. They're downloading hi-def Blu-ray rips or photo collections off BitTorrent, which isn't likely to show up in Hitwise's search queries, or get classified as "porn" visits.

But that's not to say porn can't catch back up with the Web. Some YouTube-like video sites like YouPorn and RedTube are taking off:

See Also:
Only 40% Of Web Video Is Smut, Advertising
Meet YouPorn: The X-Rated YouTube
The Porn Business Goes Public