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Porn's big data sift: Half of all adult traffic is mobile

Adult "tube" site PornHub examined its enormous user data stores with an eye on browser types, but the results reveal that phones and tablets are now 50-50 with desktop porn consumption.
Written by Violet Blue, Contributor

Adult "tube" site PornHub loves sifting through the data left by its estimated 38 million visitors a day, and PornHub's new analysis on browsers is, well, its own sort of browser porn.

The stats on browsers (not-safe-for-work) for desktop, tablet and phone paint an interesting picture in context — and we're just as grossed out as the lone PornHub commenter that anyone uses the Android browser.

Chrome leads desktop porn watching (44.4 percent), while Safari leads with mobile (38.2 percent) and again in tablet naughtiness (Safari: 73 percent).

It's reasonable to conclude from the tablet-Safari connection that despite what Apple will allow in its app store, porn does, in fact, look really great on an iPad.

porn browser data

PornHub looked at the data in ways that lead to typifying browser users.

Presented by length of duration, we'd be led to believe that Internet Explorer users either lasted the longest — or perhaps PornHub's data might suggest they face challenges reaching the summit.

On desktop and mobile, IE users spent the longest on the site (10:29 minutes and 8:57, respectively).

Presented by search terms, PornHub would have us believe that Chrome users are into older, experienced and more instructional women (MILF is Chrome's top search term), while Safari users are more sensual ("massage" is Safari's top search).

Internet Explorer users, however, appear to fit that one unfortunate guy-in-tech stereotype by way of its top porn search term ("Japanese").

In this model, Firefox users crave both wisdom and sensuality in their porn (top terms "mom" and "massage"), but have a way kinkier list of top terms than any other browser (including the unusual "smoking" fetish).

But to me, the really interesting detail in PornHub's post is this overlooked nugget:

"Of the 38 million people who visit PornHub each day, over half are now using mobile devices like tablets and smartphones."

Mobile porn use is at 51 percent — that's about 19 million users a day on phones (mostly) and tablets, checking out patently adult content.

From PornHub:

pornhub-percent-traffic-by-device

This is interesting in context of what's left of the free web on mobile. From Chris Dixon:

comscore-mobile-desktop-2014

If Chris Dixon's 'Decline of the mobile web' numbers are on the money, the lion's share of internet access is now mobile and in 2013, 80 percent of the time spent online on mobile devices was through apps.

Access to online content for mobile users is primarily through just two companies: Apple iTunes apps and Google's Chrome Store apps. For phone and tablet users, Apple and Google have replaced the internet with their own walled garden app ecosystems.

Dixon wrote,

"This is a worrisome trend for the web. Mobile is the future. What wins mobile, wins the Internet. Right now, apps are winning and the web is losing."

So, with the majority of porn use now shifting to mobile, those millions of people must be using porn apps, right?

Apparently, they're not. As is well known, adult and sex apps are super-banned from Apple's prudish app-topia and Google has always forbidden explicit apps (with a recent censorious purge on apps considered "erotic").

That's a lot of money left on the table. 

Mind you, MiKandi has been quick to the sex-positive rescue (rescuing all those users, and all that money).

But as horrified as I am at the prospect of the Apple-Google duopoly on mobile internet content censorship, I find an odd glimmer of hope in the numbers presented by PornHub.

No matter how sex-negative, counterproductive, and poorly thought out Apple and Google's adult content rules are, and the massive censorship issues they're creating... They're forcing people to leave those restrictive walled gardens to find what they're looking for.

Where they can — hopefully — think for themselves.

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