Global Adult Media Weblog

Excellent thoughts from a some different perspectives on things from Paul Lundgren at Xbiz

Adult webmasters are not the only people in cyberspace who benefit from adult entertainment; there are many mainstream webmasters who prosper from it as well.

When a mainstream website publishes the occasional article on Joanna Angel or Savanna Samson and Internet surfers make a point of reading that article, the mainstream site gets more hits — and more hits can mean more advertising.

One of the hottest mainstream websites of 2005 and 2006 has been the San Mateo, Calif.-based video-sharing site YouTube, which is a hotbed of sex-minded content despite having a no-nudity policy. YouTube is not the Internet’s only mainstream video-sharing site; there are many similar sites, including DailyMotion.com and Sharkle.com, but YouTube is, by far, the one that enjoys the strongest buzz. In July, a New York Post article claimed that YouTube’s value could be as high as $1 billion.

Highbrow, Lowbrow
Founded by CEO Chad Hurley, CTO Steve Chen and advisor Jawed Karim in 2005, YouTube has a wealth of material that is relevant to the adult industry. Search the word porn at YouTube and thousands of clips appear (the number was close to 16,000 in late August). A Ron Jeremy search on YouTube on Aug. 31 turned up almost 90 videos; with Jenna Jameson, the number exceeded 200 that day. And when the word fetish was searched for on YouTube, 4,474 videos came up. Despite having all that erotic material, YouTube enforces its no-nudity policy and will remove videos containing nudity. Regardless, plenty of adult performers and adult webmasters are finding YouTube to be a good promotional tool even without the ability to show nudity or explicit sexual acts.

Jeff Booth, president of the Los Angeles-based Erotic University and a keen observer of adult-industry trends, stresses that for a resourceful adult star or adult business, YouTube’s no-nudity policy shouldn’t be a problem.

“People in porn don’t have to post hardcore sex to promote themselves on YouTube or any similar sites,” Booth said. “People have a fascination with porn stars, and there are ways porn stars can promote themselves other than fucking. They just need to find a good hook.”

Marketing Tool
Booth pointed to California gubernatorial candidate Mary Carey as a prime example of an adult star who has been using YouTube as a promotional/marketing tool.

“Mary has used YouTube to promote her Mary Carey for Governor campaign, and she used it to promote her appearance on ‘The Daily Show,’” Booth said. “If porn stars want to promote themselves on YouTube, they need to come up with something clever like singing or like having their own reality show. Porn stars don’t have to take their clothes off to promote themselves on YouTube.”

And there are many other examples of people in the adult industry who post titillating material on YouTube without violating the site’s nudity prohibition. A tickling fetish website, for example, might promote their site by posting a trailer on YouTube; the trailer might show a scantily clad woman being tied up and tickled, but you won’t see her nude until you visit the tickling site itself.

Booth speculated, however, that he doesn’t envision YouTube going after adult industry advertisers in a big way. He predicts that most or all of the advertisers YouTube will be seeking are mainstream companies.

“The problem is that if you get a lot of adult advertisers, you run the risk of driving away your mainstream advertisers,” he said, adding that when most adult companies put together advertising budgets, they tend to focus on adult publications rather than mainstream publications and preach to the choir.

Booth contends that YouTube’s policy of removing nudity from the site is something that, ironically, contributes to its popularity among porn fans.

“The fact that YouTube will yank nudity from the site is one of the things that drives people to it,” Booth said. “YouTube can take the moral high ground and say, ‘We don’t allow nudity. If you post nudity, we’re going to take it off the site.’ But at the same time, the fact that it is going to be on the site for a short time before it gets yanked is going to drive more people to the site quicker. So in other words, please put the porn up so we can yank it down.”

PornTube.com
YouTube, however, should not be confused with PornTube.com, an adult website that provides links to quite a few other adult websites. PornTube.com’s homepage is neatly organized and compartmentalized; the adult-oriented categories range from “hot blondes” to “black booty” to “sexual enhancement.”

Unlike YouTube, PornTube.com (not to be confused with PornTube.net or the pay-per-view adult site PornTube.co.uk) is not a video-sharing site but rather an adult entertainment directory that is helpful to porn fans who have specific tastes and interests.

Booth noted that YouTube is reaching the demographic that porn companies need to reach the most: the 18-34 demographic, or as he calls it, “the wired generation.” Historically, the adult industry has been very technology-minded, and Booth stressed that because that demographic is so tech-savvy, porn companies must keep abreast of popular sites like YouTube.

“Porn always drives technology,” Booth said, “and it’s important for adult companies to market to the new generation. This new generation gets information differently from older people; they get their news and information from the Internet, and the marketers at porn companies need to exploit that. The so-called wired generation isn’t getting their news and information the way their grandparents got their news and information.”

YouTube has been receiving more and more attention from mainstream publications, although Booth contends that it is only a matter of time before the interest in YouTube cools off and another website becomes America’s hottest video-sharing destination.

“YouTube is like MySpace in that it is one of those sites that came in and really grabbed the market,” Booth explained. “There are other sites that are similar to YouTube, but right now, YouTube is the one that everyone goes to. But eventually, the next new pretty, shiny thing is going to come along and grab people’s attention.”

I am not sure that I agree 100% with everything he is saying, but I do appreciate the different viewpoints offered, and I am glad someone is pointing out the amount (or at least a portion) of mainstream corporations and media that use porn to grab audience and revenue.

I am also suprised that more attention has not been given to mobile video sharing lately. It seems that everything in the news and blogosphere has related to youtube, google video, and all of the other clones and web 2.0 companies that are trying to grab the same space. Yet the mobile video users have been left out of spotlight, and yet there are so many more cell phones, psps, and other mobile video devices being sold and used everyday. Where is the mobile porno tube portal?

I started working on a site similar to pornotube, with a very different idea of the way to present the content, but have not had the time to develop it further than the home page coming soon as of yet. Perhaps but Jan 2007 we wil launch a public Hot Video Stream – it’s gonna be hot!

Paul Lundgren says in his article that the web adress for his comparison is porntube.com, however I believe that is just a repeated typo, and what he is actually talking about is pornotube.com. Porntube.com is basically just a pay as you go adult video on demand affiliate site.

I have not been able to login to the xbiz forums or get a password reminder emailed all weekend to point out the url issue. But I have sent a note to the xbiz contact peeps.

Update – Late tonight I was able to log in to get my password reset and post about it in the xbiz forums.

A.S.S. and N.G. Merge to Form Absolute Modeling
By Michael Hayes

From XBiz;

LOS ANGELES — On the theory that three heads are better than one, industry veterans Harry Weiss, Richard Shead and Drew have combined their collective talent management knowledge to form Absolute Modeling out of their former companies: Adult Staffing Services (A.S.S.) and N.G. Modeling (Nasty Modeling).

According to Weiss, the deal made sense from a manpower perspective.

“We’ve all been friends for quite some time,” Weiss told XBIZ. “I was a one-man shop, and they were a little short-handed. We think we’ll be a stronger operation together.”

While Absolute Modeling will handle the standard industry booking arrangements for its clients, Weiss stressed that what sets the company apart is the value added of its management services.

“Management is about building and guiding a career; we don’t just book talent,” he said.

For Absolute Modeling that means keeping a lean roster of no more than three-dozen female performers and 12 guys. According to Weiss, a roster bigger than that means that people “get overlooked.”

In addition to providing management advice, Absolute Modeling believes that its mainstream contacts can help put its clients where they want to be.

The company represents Katie Morgan, who has appeared in two HBO projects: “A Real Sex Xtra: Pornucopia — Going Down in the Valley” and “Katie Morgan: A Porn Star Revealed.”

“We’re actually able to do that kind of thing because we have a lot of contacts,” Weiss said. “Mainstream producers know who we are.”

In addition to managing talent, the company books two set locations and plans to add more over time.

Pornstar promotion predicament leads to MySpace advertiser revolt
By Tom Tapp
From Hollywood Wiretap

Hollywood WireTap.com reported recently that the biggest porn stars in the world are using NewsCorp’s MySpace.com to promote themselves, sometimes to teenagers, sometimes on pages replete with ad support from corporations like T Mobile and Weight Watchers.

As a result, Weight Watchers has pulled its advertising from the site. “Our rep has issued an immediate order to pull our ads from MySpace,” says company spokesperson Grace Ann Arnold. “We’ll be reevaluating that buy.” T Mobile is “working with MySpace to rectify” the situation, according to the company’s Tom Harlin.

Both companies’ advertisements were featured prominently on pornstar pages. Each says it had language in its contract that should have prevented its ads from showing up next to content promoting XXX material. Despite phone calls, neither MySpace nor corporate parent NewsCorp has had any response to the story or these developments.

It all began with the discovery that dozens of the world’s biggest porn stars are now using the site to promote themselves, much as bands do. These performers include Jenna Jameson, Tera Patrick and Nikki Benz. Even porn industry trade publication Adult Video News has a page. Many of these, like Patrick’s, have links to the stars’ official sites offering explicit imagery, videos and sex toys. All are popular with the kids who are MySpace’s mainstay.

For example, MySpace does not divulge the number of “friends” each user has, but Jameson’s 406,571 is surely far above average. Patrick has 56,688.

What’s more, Jameson’s page has postings from 16 and 17 year olds. Patrick’s, 14 year olds.

One high school girl from Kentucky who calls herself “Pornstar” wrote on Jameson’s page:

“…you have no fucking clue how much i want to be a pornstar when i graduate.. ive only got 4 more days!! then i begin trying to start my career as a pornstar.”

She might already be on her way.

In a twist, Playboy is using MySpace as a farm league of sorts for a DVD and a pictorial in its June issue. The magazine has announced a photo spread featuring nine women discovered on the site. The eight-page spread will pair studio-shot nude photographs of the women with screen shots from their MySpace pages. According to TMZ.com, the call for submissions was one of the most popular ever for the magazine, with more than 600 women trying out.

All of this poses myriad problems for MySpace and corporate overlord NewsCorp, which paid $580 million for the site recently. Many of the site’s 75 million users are ages 14-17. Obviously parents, already concerned about the site’s alleged pedophiles, won’t be happy with this newest twist.

Then there is the advertiser reaction. Alan Meckler, CEO of Internet research firm Jupitermedia Corp. told The Wall Street Journal last month that MySpace is pulling $156 million in yearly ad revenue. But The Journal also notes MySpace has struggled to attract name brand advertisers to most of the site’s pages. Its porn star postings aren’t helping.

Last week, Weight Watchers was featured at the top of Patrick’s page. T Mobile was prominent on Jameson’s. Neither wants to be associated with XXX content.

Weight Watchers says its ads were part of a buy across many sites. “There are networks that collect unused advertising space,” says Arnold. “A company has an option to buy through these networks. You don’t actually see the site list when you buy on one. They’re supposed to abide by the language in our purchase agreement (which says) we’re not supposed to be on user-generated sites…We didn’t honestly know that our ad was being run on that page in MySpace.”

T Mobile spokesperson Harlin says his company was in a similar predicament. “This story’s brought an error to our attention,” he says. “Advertisers can (specify) only PG-rated pages on MySpace and that was supposed to be the case with us. We had no idea we’d be popping up on these pages.”

This highlights the problem of identifying the PG pages from those that are more explicit. Sorting such content from among the millions of pages on MySpace is difficult.

The Wall Street Journal reported recently on Photobucket, one company actively developing new methods of filtering for MySpace. But they’re only so effective.

Writes The Journal’s Julia Angwin:

…even though the basic elements of these Web businesses are computerized, no one has worked out an effective technology fix for the porn problem. Some scanning software has a hard time distinguishing between pictures of nudes and apple pie, and certainly can’t make the subtle judgment calls required of Photobucket’s human censors. Naked breasts partly obscured with tape? OK! X-ray-like images of sexual acts? Delete!

This should make adults only myspace portals all the more appealing.

Strip Club Wins Round Over Zoning Ordinance

By: Carlos Martinez
From AVN

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.

A strip club has won a court battle to stay in business when a Federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to stop Minneapolis from shutting down the club because it allegedly violated a zoning ordinance.

Owners of the Double Deuce had sought to overturn a 2002 zoning ordinance that aimed to shut down the city’s few remaining strip clubs, according to City Pages newspaper.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis issued the injunction in order to determine whether the ordinance was constitutional, saying that the club had raised “serious doubt as to whether the 2002 ordinance will pass constitutional muster.”

The ordinance barred adult entertainment establishments due to the “adverse secondary effects” they posed to surrounding neighborhoods. But Randall Tigue, an attorney representing the club, says such arguments had worked in the past, but no longer given that such negative secondary effects have not been proven to exist.

“The notion that adult entertainment caused crime is a lie,” he said.

“The secondary effects are just myths.”

Urban Planner R. Bruce McLaughlin, said the club averaged far fewer police calls over a three-year period than two local bars, a nearby liquor store and even one area residence. He also found no apparent effect on the value of property in the community due to the club’s operation.

Judge Davis said in his ruling that the city failed to provide any facts to support its arguments against McLaughlin’s report.