(The original article on pcpro.com was entitled "Facebook is better than sex" which I thought was an inappropriate title for such a highbrow, intellectually stimulating blog as ours)

Social networking sites have knocked pornographic websites off the top slot as the most popular attraction on the web, according to Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise.

Bill analysed information for over 10 million web users and published a book entitled "Click: What Millions of People are Doing On-line and Why It Matters". 

One of the major shifts in Internet use over the past decade has been the decline in interest in pornography or adult entertainment sites in favour of social networking sites.  Surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 per cent of searches; it was 20 per cent a decade ago.

Today, the hottest Internet searches are for social networking sites.

"As social networking traffic has increased, visits to porn sites have decreased," he said, indicating that the 18-24 year old age group in particular 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."

So for the sake of all those impressionable youngsters out there I feel you have a social responsibility to further develop the whole Web 2.0, social network thing and ensure that the youth of today and tomorrow are looking at more wholesome things on the Internet.  It will also save all the hassle of trying to configure the Parental Controls settings in McAfee on my kids computers !

Once you've done this and have links being generated by all and sundry within your organisation you need to be keeping an eye on the quality of the pages being linked to, which is a neat way of segueing into a quick plug for Sitemorse.  Although the pages on Facebook will clearly not be confused with pages on your site it would nevertheless reflect badly if they were of very poor quality or the link was broken.  So probably not as important as some of the other pages you link to they still need checking.