Denver’s Tears, Coming to a Lube Retailer Near You
Pornhub is one of the web’s biggest porn tube destinations online. Sex sells, goes the saying, but that isn’t applicable to unabashed sex destinations; unless they’re caught in some kind of legal issue, news outlets are not likely to report on porn sites. But Pornhub’s very clever — they’ve taken a page from the dating site OKCupid, which in 2009 started its OKTrends blog, using the data the site got from its hundreds of millions of users to get a sense of dating culture. PornHub’s Insights blog started in June last year, using the information the porn giant collected about people’s porn browsing habits to get ideas about the consumption of adult content among different populations.
Sunday, February 2, was the date of the NFL Super Bowl XLVIII, and the Pornhub Insights team was online, number-crunching as the Seattle Seahawks pummeled the Denver Broncos. Their findings, reported today, are fascinating:
During the game, there was a 51 percent drop in traffic to the porn site from Denver users, compared to a 61 percent drop from Seattle users. Overall, Colorado’s porn surfing dropped 49 percent, and Washington’s dropped 57 percent during the game. The United States’ traffic to Pornhub dropped 29 percent during the game.
After the game, Pornhub reports that traffic from Denver increased 11 percent, while Seattle’s traffic dropped another 17 percent. Actually, Washington state’s traffic dropped another 11 percent — probably as people took to the streets to drink and be merry.
Despite this drop from the Pacific Northwest, nationwide traffic managed to climb 4 percent after the game.
I’m a little surprised by this revelation — though I supposed tears are as good a lubricant as any.
EDITED TO ADD: The ploy worked: The Huffington Post, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, TMZ, PolicyMic, CNET all picked up the story. It even got a mention across the pond — albeit a sort of hand-wringing “oh noes, they can see what you’re doing” one — from the Telegraph.
Header image by James.
