The trend in the UK started last October when for the first time social networks became more popular than adult sites.

Hitwise says that adult sites are not surprisingly more popular with men but more than half (55%) of visitors to social networks and forums are women.

From the Hitwise blog,"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."

If you’re looking for a ‘permanent niche’, look no further than ‘Pills, Poker and Porn’.

By some estimates, Porn (abbreviated from pornography, and sometimes going by it’s synonyms ‘adult sites’, pr0n, or pron) is the biggest segment of the three. [Though it’s difficult to get quantitative data on gaming/gambling, pharmaceutical and adult sites]

So Laura Alter’s post “Social networking overtaking porn?” got me thinking: Could Social Networking sites really be more popular than porn sites?

Reader Paul Johns has suggested that social networking sites could be an avenue for people to meet up for sex or to exchange naked pictures.

Although this might be true for some sites like Facebook or MySpace, I doubt this ‘tactic’ would work as well on StumbleUpon or Del.icio.us or Digg, just because of the way it’s structured.

As for exchanging pictures, I think someone would better get their jollies, downloading full length movies from a P2P network instead. Pictures are so Web1.0…

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Here’s what I think is happening.

Most Web 2.0/social networking users have accounts at multiple service provider. For example, I have accounts at MyBlogLog, BumpZee, Affiliate Marketing Buzz, MySpace and a multitude of other services.

Does the fact that I have 15 Social Networking accounts, mean that I represent 15 unique visitors?

Just like a free webmail account, most social networking sites have free membership. It’s also an ‘incentive’ to create tons of accounts, and only use one or two services.

Does the report factor that some spam marketers are creating millions of MySpace and other accounts for spam purposes?

Well, if it does, I wouldn’t be surprised that social networking is ‘overtaking’ porn sites!

Here’s the bottomline, financial figures generally don’t lie.

If a niche is generating sufficient profit for people to make a full time living from it, then it’s worth pursuing.

Remember too, that for most Social Networking sites their value lies in their subscriber base (which is the rationale behind NewsCorp’s $580 million acquisition of MySpace).

It’s nice to have large subscriber figures, but for most small businesses, a hefty profit will make more sense.

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