Adolf Hitroll's Journal: Porn Industry Jumps on Web 2.0 Bandwagon

I had to save this before it got canned by Kuro5hin's pruritans...

By dylank in Internet
Wed Jul 18, 2007 at 09:22:40 PM EST
Tags: pr0nfest, technology (all tags)

Ten years ago it seemed that the adult industry was a major force driving Internet technology. Somehow they slipped behind the curve as the various Web 2.0 buzz-words took off, offering the same types of sites with nothing more than glitzier graphics, despite fundamental changes in the way people were using the Internet. That's finally beginning to change, however, with a new crop of adult-oriented sites which finally realize that the Internet is not simply a tool for pushing their content to consumers.

The first example is a search engine, EveKnows.com. Like Google, it uses a spider to gather content, so it's not (yet) become a haven of spammers. It sets itself apart by using RSS to distribute search results. Users can type in any term imaginable (and thanks to the Popular Search Cloud, you can see there are some pretty... erm... interesting... things people are searching for) and use their browser's RSS reader to watch for updates to the search results. For something like adult models, this seems to be a singularly well-suited tool, but it's surprising that larger engines haven't picked up on this. Using Web 2.0 technologies, EveKnows has changed the search engine from something you visit into something that (unobtrusively) visits you.

Another site to see the shift in usage is PornoTube, essentially a version of YouTube for, well, porn. Unlike EveKnows, the emphasis here is on user-supplied content--the same focus which drives the majority of mainstream Web 2.0 sites. PornoTube doesn't really break any new ground technology-wise, but it is a great example of the adult industry struggling to catch up to the way people expect modern web sites to behave.

Two other sites are also basically copies of popular mainstream pages: SocialPorn purports to be the Digg of adult content, while WikiAfterDark is closely modeled on the ubiquitous Wikipedia. Much like with PornoTube, these of-age dopplegangers show the pervasiveness of user-centric, Web 2.0 interaction.

Conspicuously absent from this list are non-free sites. Granted, the idea of nearly-viral, user-submitted content doesn't jive with the practice of monthly subscription costs, but this may also illustrate a rift between the old-school, big adult entertainment players and new, tech-savvy upstarts. Whether these new sites take off and replace the traditional, static model of adult pay-sites remains to be seen, but it should be an interesting fight. If nothing else, we all stand to gain some free pr0n from the deal. ;)