[coldtea]

$100M+ might not be much in their line of work.

From wikipedia:

Manwin is the owner of many major pornographic web 2.0 websites including YouPorn, Pornhub, Tube8, XTube, ExtremeTube, JuicyBoys, Webcams, Mydirtyhobby, KeezMovies and SpankWire which between them generate some 16 billion visitors per month and consequently are believed to be among the most popular websites on the planet. Manwin also owns and operates a number of pornographic content brands such as Brazzers, Digital Playground, Mofos, MyDirtyHobby and Twistys.

So they control half (or more) of the biggest money maker on the internet. A far better investment than Instagram (with it's ridiculous $1 billion) ever was.

[manuelflara]

Wow, I didn't know there were that big. But 16 billion visitors? How is that counted?

[corin_]

People often have a hard time getting the terminology right. 16 billion visitors is synonymous with 16 billion uniques, so not possible - by quite some way.

If you load the site, then click a few links (say 4 pages in total), then close your tab/window, then load the site and click a few more links (another 4 pages) then you are 1 visitor, 2 visits, 8 pageviews.

From the wording I would imagine they mean visits, but from that number pageviews seems easier to believe.

Related: I blame Google Analytics for much of the confusion, as they are one of the few places (at least that I've come across) that refer to unique users as "visitors", and I've found that trips up many people when compared with "visits".

[prawn]

Could Incognito/etc inflate a user count dramatically? How does Analytics count those?

[corin_]

I would imagine the answer is no, but it's not something I've ever tested. Likely will do sometime soon now you've put the idea in my head.

The reason I think no is that Google are probably clever enough to fingerprint you in a hell of a lot of ways, but I could be wrong..