Here is an interesting exercise for those who are more than 18 years old.
All of the incomplete statements below are taken either from PBS.org or from certain articles in New York Times [stuff published between 2000 and 2004]. Fill the blanks to the best of your knowledge.
- On the Internet, ______ is one of the few things that prompts large numbers of people to disclose their credit card numbers. According to two Web ratings services, about one in four regular Internet users, or 21 million Americans, visits one of the more than 60,000 _____ sites on the Web at least once a month — more people than go to sports or government sites.
- None of the corporate leaders of AT&T, Time Warner, General Motors, EchoStar, Liberty Media, Marriott International, Hilton, On Command, LodgeNet Entertainment or the News Corporation — all companies that have a big financial stake in _______ and that are held by millions of shareholders — were willing to speak publicly about the _______ side of their businesses.
- Based on estimates provided by the hotel industry, at least half of all guests buy ______.
- At home, Americans buy or rent more than $4 billion a year worth of _______.
- The ______ industry rakes in more money than pro-football, basketball and baseball combined. Americans spend more money on ________ than on movie tickets and the performing arts. [via NPR.org]
All answers are related to each other. There have been enough hints already in the above text, so no more hints.
Apparently, AT&T and General Motors sold their relevant stakes in this issue to Comcast and News Corporation, respectively; so, they don’t seem to be involved in this matter any more.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Hmmm. My first guess is “adult entertainment.” My second guess is personal finance blogs
what are you trying to get at? That there is more to the internet than PORN? I’m aghast…that can’t be true.
Pretty sure that the answer is gambling/gaming, the true American pasttime.
Gambling on porn? I’m sure that’s out there too.
I’m betting that the point of the excercise is that although the instinctive answers have to do with porn and adult entertainment, they’re actually about credit and debt. This, of course, illustrates that credit marketing is even more insidious and prevalent than porn is in our culture.
(And the sum of one and four is too five. Your spam protection thinks I’m wrong. LOL.)
My vote would also be that it’s porn! Interesting stats…
Somebody has to say it:
The Internet is for porn!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_q
Somebody has to follow up HC’s comment with a video link - somebody took the song from that musical and put it to images of World of Warcraft characters (generally safe but potentially embarrassing at work):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5430343841227974645
So where are the answers?
Ok, people - sleazy guesses were right. Not gambling, not credit/debt - it’s porn/sex.
Here is the link that started it all.
Here are the specific words:
- On the Internet, sex is one of the few things that prompts large numbers of people to disclose their credit card numbers. According to two Web ratings services, about one in four regular Internet users, or 21 million Americans, visits one of the more than 60,000 sex sites on the Web at least once a month — more people than go to sports or government sites. [NY Times, 2003, "Wall Street Meets Pornography" - subscription required]
- None of the corporate leaders of AT&T, Time Warner, General Motors, EchoStar, Liberty Media, Marriott International, Hilton, On Command, LodgeNet Entertainment or the News Corporation — all companies that have a big financial stake in adult films and that are held by millions of shareholders — were willing to speak publicly about the sex side of their businesses. [NY Times - same article as above]
- Based on estimates provided by the hotel industry, at least half of all guests buy adult movies, (which means that pay-per-view sex from television hotel rooms may generate about $190 million a year in sales). [NY Times - same article as above]
- At home, Americans buy or rent more than $4 billion a year worth of graphic sex videos from retail outlets and spend an additional $800 million on less explicit sexual films. [NY Times - same article as above]
- The adult entertainment industry rakes in more money than pro-football, basketball and baseball combined. Americans spend more money on pornography than on movie tickets and the performing arts. [NPR.org via PBS.org]
So what is the number then? Say tens of billions of dollars in revenue? I think that pales in comparison to how much Americans *wager* in gambling each year (as distinct from the revenue from the gambling/gaming industry, also in the tens of billions of dollars). I’ve read that the annual gambling wager figure is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. *Online* gambling alone is already in the tens of billions in annual wagers.
I think the word is from 3 letters, the first letter is S and the last one X. 3 years ago I also was part of this business as I was running an adult TGP site. But with time there were not enough visitors which was equal to lower and not enough money to pay for advertisement. So I turned off my site and went out of this industry. There were good times, making really good money from selling access to huge adult sites on a partner basis with the site. But now the net is full with free p..n and noone pays for it. So keep in mind my advice, if you have decided to start promoting such adult paysites better don’t. You will loose you time and more important you will loose your nerves.
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