Porn passed over as Web users become social: author

Tue Sep 16, 8:40 AM

By Belinda Goldsmith

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Social networking sites are the hottest attraction on the Internet, dethroning pornography and highlighting a major change in how people communicate, according to a web guru.

Bill Tancer, a self-described "data geek," has analyzed information for over 10 million web users to conclude that we are, in fact, what we click, with Internet searches giving an up-to-date view of how society and people are changing.

Some of his findings are great trivia, such as the fact that elbows, belly button lint and ceiling fans are on the list of people's top fears alongside social intimacy and rejection.

Others give an indication of people's interests or emotions, with an annual spike in searches for anti-depression drugs around Thanksgiving time in the United States.

Tancer, in his new book, "Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters," said analyzing web searches did not just reflect what was 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.

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."

SOCIETY CLICKS TO CHANGE

Tancer said the change in communication patterns was one of the most noticeable shifts in society in the past five years -- a key point for marketers seeking to learn about their audiences.

But analyzing data also showed what preoccupied people, allowing Tancer to predict the outcome of reality TV shows.

"I noticed in our data that some of the top search terms are about tropical storms in the United States," said Tancer.

"Before Hurricane Katrina rarely would you see a search on tropical storms but the devastation from Katrina has made us as a society much more sensitive to tropical storms."

Tancer said the current obsession with celebrities was also reflected through web data, with celebrity websites garnering more attention than sites devoted to religion, politics, well-being and diets combined -- and no sign that this is waning.

This celebrity mentality had also overlapped into the November presidential election in the United States with surfers looking for images of Republican vice presidential candidate Sara Palin rather than looking for her policies.

"A lot of the focus around the candidates in general is image based. People want to know how tall Barack Obama is and also to search for their families," he said.

"You have to get far down in the search terms to link the search for a candidate with any issue."

But Tancer said the speed at which information spread on the Internet had meant in some cases it was consumers generating the story and the media is last to record it -- or fact-check it.

"With the explosion of this type of false information on the Internet I think we will see someone come forward and develop a new type of software that can filter for the most accurate information," he said.

"Maybe accuracy is the next thing we will all search for."

(Editing by Miral Fahmy)

Japanese murder investigators fooled by life-sized sex doll

* Justin McCurry in Tokyo
* guardian.co.uk,
* Tuesday September 02 2008 17:12 BST
* Article history

Police in Japan have been left red-faced by an apparent murder that turned out to be an unusual case of mistaken identity.

It began in the morning with a frantic call from a couple who had spotted a "corpse" while out walking their dog in a mountain forest in Izu, central Japan, the ZakZak news website reported today.

Fifteen officers were dispatched to the scene, where they discovered a human form wrapped in plastic and tightly bound around the neck, midriff and ankles, with hair protruding from one end.

The body was left untouched and taken away for examination, and the crime scene duly secured by a police cordon.

Back at the local police headquarters, officials notified reporters who had turned up early the same morning to cover an annual earthquake drill. They began preparing to write up the launch of a major murder investigation.

Dozens of extra officers were dispatched to interview potential witnesses, while the evening edition of the local newspaper carried a report of the gruesome find, complete with a photograph of the body's resting place.

By mid-afternoon, the body was in the hands of police pathologists. But when they sliced open the wrapping, they were confronted not by a decomposing corpse, but by a life-sized sex doll.

A police spokesman apologised for the commotion but defended his officers, saying they had simply been following protocol by leaving the concealed "body" untouched until it was in the hands of pathologists.

Though no crime had been committed, the spokesman could not resist admonishing the doll's mystery owner. The doll, he told bemused reporters, showed signs of repeated use.

"Our guess is that the owner didn't want to take a risk by throwing it away with the rest of his rubbish," he said. "It was an incredibly irresponsible thing to do."

Lewd, crude vandal leaves his greasy imprint on Nebraska town

2 hours, 29 minutes ago

By Nate Jenkins, The Associated Press

VALENTINE, Neb. - Boy, how people here wish their busiest vandal would find another way to make his mark.

Beginning more than a year ago, some man has been skipping from one business to another at night, pressing his naked behind - sometimes his groin, sometimes both - on windows.

Store owners, church workers and school janitors have had to wash lotion and petroleum jelly off the windows he selects.

Police Chief Ben McBride says it's the weirdest case he's ever seen.

Some residents of Valentine, a town of about 2,650 people, find some humour in the strange vandalism and have taken to calling the perpetrator the "Butt Bandit."

But they also can't help but cringe when finding his marks.

"We were completely grossed out," said Kalli Kieborz, who works in a downtown building. "One day I walked into the office and an employee said, 'Oh, my God, we've been struck!"'

The police chief is far from amused.

"It's not funny," McBride said. "We're worried about the next step."

It started in spring 2007, when the window of a Methodist church was greased with an imprint. McBride figured it was a high school prank. But the church kept getting hit, even after police staked it out.

The bandit struck business after business, window after window last summer.

Then he - and maybe, McBride said, copycat vandals - stopped over the fall and winter.

"People said he was done," McBride said. "Then he started back up this summer."

During one particularly brazen session, virtually all the windows at a local hotel were imprinted.

McBride said no one has reported seeing the vandal in action. The only clue is a blurry picture of him caught by a surveillance camera at the middle school last year.

The man was six feet tall or slightly taller, and slender. He had a dark complexion, and McBride said the man's dark hair was styled in a "1980s, feathered look."

Valentine, in remote north-central Nebraska, promotes itself as "The Heart City." Downtown sidewalks are painted with hearts, and locals encourage people from around the country to send their Valentine's Day cards to the local post office so they can be mailed out with the word "Valentine" stamped on them.

"This is not normal behaviour for Valentine," Cherry County Attorney Eric Scott said. "It's not funny or something people want to be exposed to."

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On the Net:

City of Valentine: http://www.valentine-ne.com/

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