Social networking bigger than porn

Intel VP wants ubiquitous Facebook
TechRadar.com 20 Mar 08;

“If you took all of the porn off the internet,” Dr Cox said in sitcom Scrubs, “you’d be left with one site called ‘Bring back the porn’”. But according to Intel’s senior vice president Arun Chandrasekhar, it is actually social networking now consuming the most bandwidth online.

Chandrasekhar was commenting on the rise of WiMax – the next generation wireless network – when he told the Von.x conference that porn was taking a back seat in comparison to social networking. And that it was the latter that was driving the demand for mobile platforms.

"[Social networking everywhere] is the next chase," Chandrasekhar added. "This race has started, and there's a tremendous amount to be done here."

Push

Intel is aggressively pushing the WiMax technology, insisting that it will quickly spread in the way that its predecessor Wi-Fi has. Indeed Chandrasekhar told the conference that 37 per cent of laptops being built with its Intel Atom Centrino processor would be WiMax enabled.

The conference was also given a glimpse of Intel’s vision of the future, with a three-way fold up internet device codenamed ‘Magic’ which had a keyboard and screen one way and a media player the other.
By Patrick Goss