Pornotube
Eroticism Comes to Microblogging with Boobik?
22 Comments
by Mark Hendrickson on January 22, 2008

The tenets of Web 2.0 are not without their pornographic, or otherwise erotic, applications. We’ve covered PornoTube and EroShare, both of which are sites for user-generated porn. Now we’ve come across a site called Boobik? (yes, with a question mark in its name, and no, NSFW). If PornoTube is a YouTube of porn and EroShare is a Flickr of porn, then perhaps it’s best to describe Boobik? as a Twitter of porn.

To be fair, Boobik? doesn’t explicitly bill itself as a place for sharing user-generated pornography. Rather, it places the emphasis on social networking (the Facebook of porn?):

boobik is a place to meet people the sexy way.

You can get to know people through them sharing and broadcasting short experiences, thoughts and fantasies. By that we mean what they did last night, just now (hand in skirt under the desk), with whom and how many times). And don’t forget them pictures as well…

But the result, I imagine, will be mostly just to share pornographic material with others. The site’s frontpage shows a series of microblog posts, some of which contain photos with nudity. You can post text, photos, and video embeds with Boobik?, apparently of any rating level (the terms of service doesn’t preclude explicit material).

Want to share erotic thoughts on the go? You can also post to the site from a mobile phone, IM account, or email.

Thanks goes to Orli Yakuel for discovering this site.

Porn Set Free: Age Record Keeping Deemed Unconstitutional
45 Comments
by Duncan Riley on October 24, 2007

porn.jpgCreators of porn websites have been set free of onerous confirmation of age record keeping laws, after the Unites States Court of Appeals found that the law requiring the keeping of these records was unconstitutional.

Previously, porn websites hosted in the United States had to keep records confirming that all performers shown on their sites were of a legal age. More recently there has been some suggestion that these requirements would be extended to all sites showing porn, potentially destroying sites such as YouPorn.com and Pornotube.com (both NSFW) who rely on user generated content and therefore would not have access to records.

A majority ruling of the Appeals Court found that “the purpose, and the legislative history of the statute make clear that Congress was concerned with all child pornography and considered record keeping important in battling all of it, without respect to the creator’s motivation” in that it impedes free speech rights.

Law.com notes that “the decision is a significant First Amendment ruling that directly implicates the controversial subjects of legal adult pornography and illegal child pornography.” For anyone in a Web 2.0 related porn business, it’s simply a sign that they have a future. See our overview of porn sites in this space here.

New Generation Adult Sites Roundup
39 Comments
by Michael Arrington on August 11, 2007

Online porn is usually a cutting edge industry and it is always all about the money. The industry is often first to the Internet with new features that eventually trickle down to mainstream consumer sites.

The latest wave of web innovation, though, was centered squarely on consumer sites. And the porn guys have adapted many of those features to create massively successful second generation adult content sites. PornoTube was the first we came across, in mid 2006. Others, like EroShare, have followed. We also mentioned Red Light District, a virtual world, in a recent roundup post.

Go2Web2 has just posted a roundup of some additional ones. Some of these have fantastic names - MegaRotic, Fantasti.cc, NippleByte, and StumblePorn, for example.

Many of these sites are little more than lead generation tools for more traditional porn sites (and if you are going to visit them, put on some protection first). But it is fascinating to see the industry try anything new to get new money in. Lots of competition and lots of money drive all of this.

Internet Pornography Stats
113 Comments
by Michael Arrington on May 12, 2007

Check out this video from Good Magazine that shows a number of stats about the Internet pornography industry, in an “almost” not safe for work format. It is staggering how much actual money flows through porn and how many people are involved in the industry:

  • 89% of porn is created in the U.S.
  • $2.84 billion in revenue was generated from U.S. porn sites in 2006
  • $89/second is spent on porn
  • 72% of porn viewers are men
  • 260 new porn sites go online daily

We’ve covered a handful of adult-related startups here. These include a porn-specific browser called HeatSeek (that has connections to Sequoia-funded Songbird), a user-generated porn YouTube clone called Pornotube, as well as a few others like EroShare and ScrewTube.

Usually the porn industry innovates first and key features make their way to more mainstream sites. But over the last couple of years, many of the new ideas around web applications, like user generated content, video sharing, etc., went mainstream first and are now hitting the porn sites.

YouTube has Porn Clone
165 Comments
by Michael Arrington on July 25, 2006

The porn industry has always had an “early adopter” model. We’ve covered a few porn related sites that have adopted new web features in the past (notably Heatseek and Social Porn). PornoTube (Note: NOT WORK SAFE), which integrates YouTube-like features, is the most recent example of the trend. While YouTube has a clear policy banning porn, PornoTube has a policy that is just the opposite.

PornoTube offers on demand Flash videos (our sponsor Adobe will be proud I’m sure) of user uploaded pornography, including video, audio and photgraphs. The site is surprisingly well designed and has social features like rating, commenting, etc. All videos are tagged and can be browsed via a tag cloud or by straight or gay content. There are RSS feeds for various categories. Videos can also be embedded into other sites.

The site is free for users. For more technically saavy users, bittorent has long been a source of free pornography. But PornoTube, which is usable by anyone with a computer, could be disruptive to sites that are charging for similar content. I imagine PornoTube will have similar copyright issues as YouTube, however, and will have to pull that content down over time.

They even have a “beta” in their logo. Check it out, if it’s your thing.

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