Well not like the fabulous stories that would be worth an article on Reddit but still. Just some bits that I found interesting regarding people's porn habits.
So I work in IT and interview candidates quite often. These websites, although porn sites, are "classic it" work. You know, manage accounts, credit cards, manage servers, high availability, user privacy (the most important thing for these guys). Often these guys have experience in managing applications handling huge traffic. Plus of course, just like the others, they do gather a lot of data from users (without identifying them), and so some have experience in maybe not "Big Data" but at least in "Somewhat Big Data". I just wanted to remind all that these guys are not wierdos because they work on porn sites, they are just the regular IT guys.
Anyways:
Since a lot of people access these sites from mobile, often the site can track GPS location of the user. And of course they have the IP so they can "follow" a user. I was told that a BIG chunk of the traffic comes from "moving" users, and mapping the coordinates, it seems that there is A LOT MORE people watching porn in the subway that I have thought. I mean, I take the subway everyday (and do not watch porn) and I never saw anyone watching porn. But it seems that for many many many users, the metro is the perfect place to watch porn. Like... a big percentage of all the traffic.
Again, since they have the IP, they can profile that IP, actually they do it to offer targetted content. It seems that most people are on ONE thing. Like they pursue ONE fantasy when watching porn. People don't often move from say the "Big Boobs" theme to ... err, whatever other category. Anyways, it seems that more and more people are into very specific sub-categories and stick there. The tendency is that the general themes are left aside and people really know what they want.
Some IPs are showing at a very specific time every day. Like 8:23 am. Not 8:30 or 8:15 but specifically 8:23 (for example). So some people have very specific habits and time frames. Also, some people are really aware of release dates, and will appear on the site only when a new video was released, knowing that the video was DVDed on this date and the site usually puts them on 3 days later, something like that.
The biggest rising theme is "shemales". But what surprises me is that this is one of the most popular category already, and still growing. I am not judging anyone's tastes, but I would have thought that this theme would suit a few people, a small percentage. I felt that this was a very specific fantasy, enjoyed by few. Well I was wrong. People are really into this.
So these are just bits of conversation. These were not held during the intervew but you know, after the interview, smoking a cig outside. And I did not dig too much into details although I found all this fascinating. You know, it is like looking at a snapshot of our society's secret intimate desires, and finding out that it is much more diverse that I expected.
About the guys. Well most of these guys did not have much special stories to tell. However, most of them said the same thing. They are leaving not because the job / pay is bad, but because you know, you manage porn sites, your work on porn sites, you are exposed to porn when you test, validate, monitor and so on. Plus, sometimes you are on a project regarding a new site or a new category, and maybe that category is far from being your thing, but you end up talking about that and working with that for months.