For established as well as prospective operators within the online adult entertainment industry who are seeking to profit in today's challenging market environment, it is vital to not only understand what you wish to sell, but what potential customers already enjoy.

Doing so is the best way to be competitive while identifying areas for improvement that can be turned into your own unique sales propositions.

The perfect example of this is the tube site phenomenon; blamed by some in the adult industry for "killing the biz" — but for many consumers, however, the tubes are the biz.

The denial and false assumptions surrounding this current reality is hurting previous-generation adult sites and muddying the waters for new entries and initiatives. While real world factors come into play beyond a site's search result rankings, a quick trip to Google can provide a ready glimpse into some of today's most popular adult Internet sites — revealing what consumers find (and thus come to expect) when they look for porn.

The following are the Top 10 organic results I obtained from searching Google for "porn" as a single keyword — in much the same way as an "average" surfer might:

• www.pornhub.com
• www.porn.com
• www.mrbabes.com
• www.loverofporn.com
• www.freepornyourturn.com
• www.bangyoulater.com
• www.sexytimez.net
• www.porn.to
• www.eroticandy.com
• www.xkcd.com/598/

In the interest of scientific research, I decided to follow these links to see what I would find. PornHub, a tube site, ranked number one, displaying a number of free clips on its home page, with an easy user interface. One of the top thumbnails caught my eye and I was soon enjoying "Red Neck MILFs Tanning," featuring a couple of hot mommas that stripped out of their bikinis, rubbed baby oil on each other and became good friends.

The advertising is unobtrusive and the bold invitation to "unlock all features for $1" undoubtedly pulling in cash. The video played for more than 13 minutes, was compelling and of a higher quality than I had expected for a free sample.

As a consumer venturing out on to the adult Internet, whether I spent that buck or not, I may not go any further in my quest for online porn.

Free tube portal Porn.com came in second in the listings, also offering free videos. Joined by fifth placed Free Porn Videos (www.freepornyourturn.com), a pseudo directory site, these sites undoubtedly deliver considerable levels of traffic to the Pimproll network.

Mr. Babes and Lover of Porn are also tube sites, but unlike many others, the latter site requires users to register (or login) before viewing any videos. Bang You Later is also a tube site, boasting high quality video along with a mobile and iPad version. SexyTimez is a busy looking tube portal as is Porn.to. Erotic Candy, on the other hand, is a review blog.

The last listing is particularly interesting, as it is a single comic strip entitled "porn," on a blog calling itself "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." I cannot say how it ranks so well, but wonder why so many adult sites rank lower…

So there you have it — 70 percent of the top "porn" sites are tube sites (at least from the standpoint of this one, simple metric). While these sites offer the same type of content (free adult video clips), there are distinct quality and usability differences between them, as well as variances in feature set depth and business models. Blogs and paysite reviews make up the rest.

This does not necessarily mean that building a tube site is the way to go, it just means that understanding the tube experience is vital to understanding consumer expectations — the meeting and exceeding of which is the key to success. Take a fresh look at the leading adult websites today and see how their strengths can be incorporated into your approach.

It was 15 years ago this evening. September 15, 1995. I was hiding out in my concrete reinforced shower stall; the mattress from my bed pulled tight against the shower stall's narrow opening. I was drinking a bottle of Malibu rum and praying to God that I would live through the night, while the open-beamed ceiling of my home visibly vibrated as if shaken by a giant hand.

If I survived my ordeal, I told myself, then I would enter the online porn business, full time — and become a part of one of the wildest roller coaster rides in history.

Outside the confines of my shelter, the rest of the bathroom area was packed with enough food, bottled water and other supplies to last me at least two weeks — while beyond the walls of my cottage on the Havensight hillside overlooking St. Thomas' popular waterfront and cruise ship docks, Hurricane Marilyn was busily putting an end to my photography and video business — as well as to my profitable and rapidly growing travel and tourism websites targeting America's Paradise, the U.S. Virgin Islands.

I had been online for around two years already, helping to bring the Internet to this corner of the Caribbean, "erecting virtual billboards on the information super highway," and bringing the best of the islands to tourists the world over. During that time, I had seen a small handful of adult sites — those my friend Bob had recommended, telling me that "Internet porn was where the money is at." I had even made a few galleries using free sponsor content and made a few sales, but porn was not something that a good Catholic boy like me was interested in — after all, what would the nuns have thought?

A loud "bang!" followed by a terrible crushing sound signaled the end of the Baha'i center next door, as it blew off its foundation and rolled down the hill, startling me back to my present situation. I had heard about the devastation that Hurricane Hugo had wrought on neighboring St. Croix, which had never fully recovered, even a decade later. This wasn't my first storm in Paradise, but it was the worst, and I knew that my business was over, at least for a few years — and all due to forces well beyond my control.

The problem with living in Paradise, you see, is in relying on a local customer base that could be blown away at any moment.

The Internet frees you from this dependency.

Sure, I could have kept building websites for local clients and focused my own on delivering the message of recovery, but why try to make other folks happy? I could just add pop-ups to my sites and get 20 cents per click from everyone that visited, whether they liked the site or not — and if they bought from my sponsors as well, then cha-ching!

"White Boy!"

My head was pounding from the finishing of the Malibu. My roof appeared intact but I saw the sun shining through a broken window.

"White Boy! You safe?"

It was the young wife of the Rasta man next door, climbing over my smashed fruit trees and other landscaping that now buried the front of my cottage.

"Your car washed down the hill! It's upside down in the street below!"

I crawled out and looked around at what the day before was one of the most beautiful places on earth, but now appeared to be a war zone in some far off land.

"Whatcha gonna do now, White Boy?" Ras asked.

"I and I gonna be a porn monger, serious, me son," I replied in my best island lilt.

Faced with upheaval I could not control, I sought and found opportunity elsewhere. Others have come and gone as well due to their own fates and motivations and the industry goes on. The world has changed dramatically in the intervening decade and a half, and the type of bold opportunities that the early days of the Internet offered (adult or otherwise) have long since subsided. If I was in the same situation today, the options would not be nearly so clear or the path so easy to follow as it was when I first ventured down this long road.

For me, the adventure continues, while for others, it ends; and for others still, this is only the beginning. Wherever you are on your journey, good luck and enjoy the process — whatever the reasons are that brought you here.

Many operators in the adult space are familiar with the rapidly evolving complexities and continually changing options within the billing game. Sometimes these issues surround new regulations, while other times they involve new opportunities for profit.

Such is the case with the attack on MasterCard and Visa's billing market domination, now being conducted by telecom giants AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, which are developing a contactless, Smartphone-based retail payment system that is intended to replace traditional credit and debit card use.

Bloomberg reports that Atlanta and several other U.S. cities will host the initial trial of the m-payment solution, in cooperation with Discover Financial Services, which will provide the payment-processing infrastructure; and Barclays, tasked with managing the accounts.

"This is definitely a game-changer," Richard Crone of Crone Consulting stated, saying how the wireless carriers "are the biggest recurring billers in every market."

"They are experts at processing payments," Crone added.

Crone notes that wireless carriers enjoy advantages over the card associations, which could allow them to take control of the U.S. payments market from Visa and MasterCard.

"A mobile device is online, real-time interactivity that changes the customer relationship," Crone concluded. "A card is dumb."

For its part, Visa wants to be a part of the mobile payments loop, despite the major carriers' seeming focus on going it alone and not sharing the pie with the billing giant.

"Visa is in discussions with a number of mobile operators around the world," Bill Gajda of Visa Mobile stated. "We continue to believe that the best opportunity to create a secure, scalable, mobile-payment service is by working together, converging mobile and financial networks, and extending the value of electronic payments to the mobile channel."

Competition, especially within the world of financial services, is a good thing and may make it easier for adult merchants to enjoy access to these developing technologies.

Regardless of the final applications, however, it is clear that the streamlining of all forms of payment systems is continuing; with innovative tools and simple ease of use. Concerns over security, anti-trust issues and competitive grandstanding may hamper the swift adoption of Smartphone "wave" payment processing, but this and other forms of mobile billing are rapidly coming our way — who will provide these services is the only remaining question…

The world of adult content production and distribution is in a tremendous state of flux these days no matter how you slice it — with some long established studios and content providers closing their doors — just as new entrepreneurs attempt to take their place.

While a return to the glory days of new adult content production may never return due to a wide variety of factors including the overall economy; the glut of free porn currently available online; piracy; and continually shifting consumer preferences, the breadth, depth and overall quality of Internet porn has never been better.

That may be good news for consumers and free porn surfers in particular, but for the industry, it is not a signal for a well-deserved pat on the back, but an indication of the overall devaluing of traditional pre-recorded content — to a point where its producers are dumping it at fire sale prices. This allows webmasters to offer much higher quantities of high quality video to their paysite members — or even on free sites.

There was so much of this material made available in 2009 that even the most popular of porn stars may have a hard time finding work in 2010 — or even 2011. Indeed, it may take a major technological revolution in content presentation or consumer avoidance of the increasingly dated appearance of this material for substantial levels of new production to get back up to speed. This situation does not only affect talent, but also everyone else within the production and distribution food chain.

There are some technologically influenced bright spots in the world of adult content production and delivery, however, including a rapidly growing number of application-specific content needs, such as small-screen shooting for mobile devices; specially encoded performances that enable haptic devices; and forays into the emerging world of augmented reality. Combine these needs together and producers from small boutique shops to the largest of adult powerhouses may find a big demand for new content.

Do not dismiss the consumer appeal of augmented reality, either. At a recent trip to the grocery store, a large display of Hallmark greeting cards caught my eye. Part of the company's new augmented reality line, the cards allow recipients to log in to its website and by holding their greeting card up to their webcam for identification purposes, receive additional, enhanced content via the Internet.

This is how the next generation of consumers uses Internet content today, bridging the real and virtual worlds — does your offering stack up, both today and for tomorrow?

Another bright spot is the world of live content in its many forms. While some operators limit their thoughts on the subject to mean "webcams," live content can also be audio-based or entail custom postings to social networks, for example, as marketing and communications venues that appeal to the next-generation of surfers. I would include in this segment highly interactive environments, such as virtual reality worlds.

The bottom line: While 2010 is seeing relatively little traditional content production, the more innovative uses of content, including those that are not yet prevalent, will drive new production efforts. Amateur producers using Smartphones and other devices also play an increasing role in production, but their output tends to serve different audiences than do the more mainstream adult producers. Of course, that "different audience" still includes paying customers — something that mainstream porn audiences are lacking in, as consumers express their preference for free porn via tube sites.

Regardless of the challenges, creative erotic artists can still find lucrative markets — they just won't be falling into your lap anymore.

"I built 10 new sites today, all in different niches, and now I need some link trades."

Statements such as this are (or were) commonplace in adult webmaster land, but they belie the weaknesses inherent in mass-produced cookie cutter websites, where marketing is simply an afterthought.

In order to be profitable in today's ultra-competitive marketplace, operators must view marketing as more than just advertising or sales — but as a fundamental ingredient to the development and presentation of any product or service — including those within the adult entertainment industry.

For example, how many webmasters have built and opened websites with no more "market research" than reading a message board thread about the latest "hot niche" for affiliates to promote — whatever it is?

For those webmasters wondering why their sales are not as good as they had hoped, one reason is that they do not understand their audience, its needs, or their own products as well as they think they do. They also may not understand that marketing encompasses all parts of a website, from its content offerings to its delivery formats, price points and payment policies, navigational structure and the ease with which users locate and view their desired material, along with the depth and freshness of that material.

Consider a real world example involving two sharply contrasting retail outlets that both offer the same products at the same prices, but one has attentive and polite staffing and a clean, orderly shop in a good neighborhood. The other has uninterested clerks that spend their time chatting among themselves and ignoring the few customers in their dirty storefront on the wrong side of town.

Where would you rather shop?

Your website and the user experience it provides are no different from that example: provide a safe and comfortable experience for your users and convince them that joining is the right thing to do. It is all a part of marketing — from the salesperson's smile to the brightly lit store containing everything you need — the question is, how do you transfer this to the digital realm?

Ponder all of this in context of the current online adult space, using VOD and Tube sites as examples. The former offers advantages over subscription-based offers, in that the customer only pays for what he wants, not for all the extra content that he was not interested in. This worked all fine and dandy; and for some affiliates, promoting VOD sites was an answer to sagging subscription site sales. Enter the Tube sites, offering the same "watch a little or watch it all" experience as the VOD sites, except these upstarts are doing it free. Compound this situation with the legacy systems used by some VOD sites and how they stack up in comparison to today's innovative Tube sites and you may find that the free product is sometimes superior to its premium priced competition.

Might better marketing, including more leading-edge offerings, allow established VOD sites to overcome the allure of free? That's a tough question with tough answers — but the future success of "pay for what you want" sites, and all premium content offers, hangs in the balance — and that question will not be answered as an afterthought.

The Cal/OSHA determination that existing laws protecting workers from exposure to blood borne pathogens applies equally to the adult space has caused quite a bit of concern for some of California's adult operators.

Among the regulatory body's oversight includes a prohibition against the introduction of ejaculate into a performer's orifices — i.e., you cannot cum in your model — whether the performer is willing (or even begging), or not.

The fact that "this is porn" makes no difference.

Some operators and performers are under the mistaken belief that a waiver or other text in the model release may allow for "voluntary" exposure to bodily fluids, but the law protects people from themselves — preventing financial or other pressures from being relieved under the auspices of "acceptance." For example, "I need the money," or "I have to take that facial in order to get the scene," is not justification for accepting the personal responsibility for unacceptable workplace risks.

While some familiar with the legitimate adult entertainment industry will point to its overall clean bill of health and rigorous testing regimens as evidence that self-regulation works thus and workplace safety regulations are not needed, other voices, such as that of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), have other viewpoints.

AHF has taken upon itself the task of pressuring lawmakers in several states to enforce workplace safety laws on the sets of adult productions. AHF began its campaign to require condom use in California, but expanded it to other states in response to adult industry threats of leaving the state for other locations.

For example, AHF has already pressured Florida officials into opening investigations of Bang Bros., Hustler, Josh Stone and Reality Kings, claiming that the companies' lack of condom use violate the state's "sanitary nuisance" ordinances.

"Nuisance" may be a great word to describe this hostile situation, as it is unclear how rigorous inspections and investigations will be. However, Cal/OSHA seems to operate on a complaint-driven system — a great reason for producers to treat talent well.

In a recent polling of the XBIZ.net community, members of the adult entertainment industry voiced their opinion on the mandatory use of condoms within adult productions, with 33 percent in favor and 67 percent against the requirement.

Discussing the issue on the XBIZ.net community forum, several operators expressed interest in moving production out-of-state — a problematic choice at best with uncertain legal ramifications; while others opined that production would just "move underground." "Moving underground" is not much of an option, however, when performers are the ones most likely to initiate a complaint.

For its part, Cal/OSHA seems to support the use of artificial ejaculate ("fake cum"), and technical solutions to the aesthetic concerns of consumers and directors — removing the visual appearance of condoms through creative blocking, with digital manipulation as a means of "fixing the problem in post." Removing rubber gloves and safety glasses in post may also prove quite a challenge, if regulators decide to go all-out.

While there is no lack of artificial ejaculate in adult content today, consumers can tell the difference between it and the real thing — and most demand the organic version. And although all manner of visual wizardry is available to Hollywood and beyond, the cost of digitally "removing" a condom or other protective gear from a scene after the fact makes this option prohibitive for most if not all adult productions.

So where does this leave the industry? Will condom use become widespread in porn, or will producers in California, Florida and elsewhere carry on with "business as usual?"

The headlines at XBIZ will provide the answer.

I have just returned from XBIZ Summer Forum '10 in Las Vegas, which provided a unique glimpse of the state of the online adult entertainment industry today. Attended by a group of determined survivors, seasoned veterans and persistent newcomers, the event attracted a variety of players from around the world.

One of the most obvious takeaways from this event is that while adult has obviously shrunk in size and profitability, this has sown the seeds for resurgence by traditionally strong brands, which are leveraging some new initiatives — such as PrivateCamZ.com and its re-launch as CamWorld.com. There were other signs of the continued evolution of the business, at this, the adult entertainment industry's premiere summer gathering; and I would like to share several of them with you:

One of those moments came during the "SEO: 2010 Strategies, Techniques & Best Practices" seminar, when moderator Mark "Greenguy" Jenkins asked audience members to raise their hands if they were involved in affiliate promotions. Only a couple of hands raised in acknowledgement, spurring Jenkins, a well-known adult webmaster affiliate, to ask how many paysite, network or affiliate program owners were there. Once again, very few hands rose in affirmation. The vast majority of those attending this SEO seminar do not promote their own (or someone else's) traditional, premium adult website.

Jenkins seemed as surprised as I was and this led some observers to question just what these folks actually "do" within the adult industry, since only a few short years ago, many more hands in such a seminar would have been raised in response to Jenkins' queries.

Of course, this is simply the "new" industrial reality, where many business models are in play and the ones that now remain are not necessarily those that worked in the past.

Sure, there are still paysites and networks, affiliate programs and affiliates — but you will no longer find the sort of pervasive "affiliate manager" presence at these events, nor, without the advent of sister show XFANZ Expo as a draw, would you have seen the same amount of industry talent poolside, as XBIZ Summer Forum attendees were treated to.

Many companies are scaling back their event presence, sending fewer representatives and even fewer "booth bunnies" to brighten the day. There are fewer parties and those that are occurring are typically not as extravagant as in years past. Instead, doing business and receiving a return on attendees' show presence investment is more starkly in focus.

Business is being done, however, even if it is not as easy or as ridiculously profitable as before — and while few expect a return to "the good old days," sales are on the uptick — it is just a matter of working harder for less and of being smarter in your processes.

A new generation of premium content sites enabled by open source software apps and bolstered by sophisticated systems such as ClickTruth's consumer profiling and targeting; highly advanced leased adult content delivery from AdultCentro; sales-saving tools such as the intelligent chat agent offered by Intellichat Adult; and the T3Report competitive analysis service create new marketing possibilities for forward looking operators. These technologies were on display at the XBIZ Summer Forum, allowing adult operators to see how some of their peers are profiting from porn in today's challenging consumer market while providing inspiration for future product developmental efforts.

Another defining moment occurred when noted adult affiliate webmaster "XXX Jay" Quinlan arrived promptly on time for his 10:00 a.m. SEO panel appearance — and did so sober.

Those of you who know Jay understand that he is an iconic symbol of old-school adult webmaster excess and success, who has rarely if ever it seems been on time or sober at one of his on-stage presentations. This day, he walked in early and clear-eyed — and I thought to myself, "it's all over now…"

In a twisted way, it was a bit sad, because it showed how far we have come and just how serious this industry has gotten. In my head, Van Halen played "Where have all the good times gone?"

We are not alone, however, as my final example illustrates.

While thumbing through a hotel-provided copy of "944" magazine — the music issue — a pull quote from an interview with popular recording artists Maroon 5 caught my eye. It quoted front man Adam Levine as saying, "The rock star industry is effectively over. I think it's great though. This is the fuel for a new renaissance in music."

"Everything is so splintered into a million different micro-categories, labels don't have the dough to even spend anymore — there's just no real focus," Levine said. "It feels like a big karmic retribution."

"It's not just in music. It's everywhere," added band mate Jesse Carmichael. "In art, business, whatever, it's more about taking the initiative and doing something meaningful. Bands are no different."

Neither is porn any different or more immune to the overall pressures faced by all entertainment sectors today — especially those as easily pirated and redistributed as is digital content, whether it is adult entertainment, mainstream movies, or music.

You will see the adult operators that figure it out at an XBIZ event in 2011.

Beware, children, girlie magazines are a narcotic that leads to communism and which opens the doors to homosexual hankerings and sadistic cravings — all at the expense of the taxpayer — and society, which bears the burden of rape, murder and venereal disease.

Oh, the glamorous life of an adult webmaster: it is 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning and I'm preparing to leave for Las Vegas with my lovely wife Dawn to attend the XBIZ Summer Forum and XFANZ Expo. While enjoying my morning coffee and email, I am also going through the latest recordings on my office DVR, which includes a short film recently aired on TCM entitled "Perversion for Profit."

Produced in 1965 by the Charles Keating-backed Citizens for Decent Literature, Perversion for Profit portrays "the floodtide of filth that is engulfing our country," in a light that when viewed by today's audiences seems laughably primitive and ill informed — much as how the 1936 film Reefer Madness portrayed marijuana use as inevitably leading to murder.

I love these kinds of films, not only for their artistic representation of outdated social mores, but also for the true slice of Americana and a forgotten time that they reveal, and I thought that I’d share this one with you. It discusses Supreme Court rulings, community standards and anti-porn activism — describing porn as a two billion dollar racket that promotes moral decay and the decline of civilization.

"We know that once a person is perverted, it is practically impossible for that person to adjust to normal attitudes in regards to sex," narrator George Putnam, described as an outstanding news reporter, stated, detailing how regardless of whom originally purchases the pornographic materials, "75 to 90 percent of it ends up in the hands of our children."

"Now, you might ask yourself, 'Why this sudden concern? Pornography and sex deviation have always been with mankind.' This is true. But, now, consider another fact: never in the history of the world have the merchants of obscenity, the teachers of unnatural sex acts, had available to them the modern facilities for disseminating this filth," Putnam continued. "High-speed presses, rapid transportation, mass distribution: all have combined to put the vilest obscenity within reach of every man, woman, and child in the country."

Yes, the high-speed printing press, America's new highway system and the U.S. Mail — rather than the Internet — are the technological villains here.

Highlighting the widespread availability of "girlie" and "nudist" magazines, which demonstrate a "preoccupation with the female breast to the point where it has become a fetish," Putnam characterized an image of a woman's butt as "appealing to sodomites," while tight-fitting boots, riding crops and burning cigarettes hint at sadistic overtones.

"And then we come to a terribly sad indictment of our society," Putnam said. "The so-called 'physique' group of publications."

Putnam warns young men that the magazines they are turning to for instruction in bodybuilding and nutrition are really tools for luring them into homosexual perversion.

"'Today's conquest' they say, 'is tomorrow's competition," Putnam revealed as the true slogan of homosexuals out to degrade our youth — displaying a series of shocking images that depict "the tender age at which homosexuals prefer their conquests."

"This moral decay weakens our resistance to the onslaught of the communist masters of deceit," Putnam continued — little realizing how sagely his words foreshadowed the influence of Russian webmasters in spreading adult entertainment across the Internet — right into the homes of wholesome American families.

Surprised that it has taken me this long to uncover such a gem of social intolerance, this author wholeheartedly encourages all operators in the adult entertainment industry to watch Perversion for Profit — available as a free download from the Internet Archive.

And remember, parents, do not let smut peddlers lure your daughters into lesbianism — keep them away from stimulating materials so they can enjoy a happily married life.

Visa's recent warning to banks and payment processors of an impending fraudulent action stemming from Eastern Europe is leading to renewed calls for enhanced scrutiny of the merchants that process credit and debit cards.

The warning comes on the heels of an intelligence report from an unnamed "third-party entity indicating that a criminal group has plans to execute a large batch settlement fraud scheme."

A variety of global intelligence agencies routinely share information gathered from unrelated investigations with relevant corporate entities, and while several high-profile investigations of adult companies and their billing practices are ongoing, there has been no disclosure of how and where the information about this scheme had been obtained by Visa.

"The criminals claimed to have access to account numbers and the ability to submit a large batch settlement upload to occur over a weekend," the Visa warning states, adding that it does not have any information as to when the fraudulent settlement activity may occur, only that the merchant account is associated with a bank in Eastern Europe.

Batch settlements are routinely performed as a means of forwarding the day's credit card transactions to the merchant's acquiring bank in a batch, rather than individually.

It is the responsibility of the acquiring bank to approve the merchant for processing — an approval process that many stakeholders are hoping will become more stringent in the face of these massive fraud attempts. This of course would hamper the smaller, often sole-proprietorship driven adult website owner attempting to secure processing for his or her new venture — especially for those operators located outside of the United States.

Visa says that after being notified of the threat, it "immediately implemented monitoring of large settlement activity for banks located in Eastern Europe," although it has yet to see any abnormal or large settlement activity and it is unclear why this level of monitoring was not standard operating procedure.

"Although the source of the information is reliable, the information that Visa has received coming forward so far is limited," the Visa warning continued. "Visa suspects that this scheme may be linked to a consortium of online merchants that have been trying to secure processing arrangements after being shut down at several acquirers across many geographies."

With some reports speculating that this criminal consortium may involve adult and other high-risk merchants, you can be certain that more transparency will be demanded on the part of adult merchants by those acquiring banks still willing to underwrite them. Measures such as requiring extended SSL certification and a much more robust merchant background check are being discussed, but these may prove largely ineffective against the organized criminal gangs the current Visa warning seeks to address.

Visa is also telling financial institutions and credit card processors that "immediate action must be taken to investigate, limit the exposure of cardholder data, notify Visa, report investigation findings, and inform your local FBI office or local law enforcement," if this form of activity is detected.

One of the unintended consequences of "the mainstreaming of porn" is that many of today's consumers no longer visit "porn sites" for porn — instead, they increasingly get it through mainstream portals.

A case in point is Chatroulette.com, an ostensibly mainstream webcam portal that is by all accounts being overrun by dudes that can't keep it in their pants — and feel a need to show the world, live via the Internet — and not to make a buck, but "just because…"

And a lot of viewers are watching and the buzz is building…

They enjoy the reality — not the fake porn-world "reality" where pizza boys don't burn themselves on hot cheese and the hottest chick in the world will hop right into the back of a derelict van full of drooling young perverts with a rented camcorder.

Rather, Chatroulette pairs random strangers for webcam encounters, which perhaps unsurprisingly often involve a penis — despite the site's prohibitions on such displays. Sure, there's a lot more going on, but this is the kind of "exposure" that draws in surfers looking for this material and can rapidly evolve the face of a community — and even become "the next big thing" in porn — whether it wants to be or not. (This of course is a perspective that I imagine Steve Jobs can relate to as he tries to keep porn out of iTunes).

This is a side story in itself about how true user communities, like corporations that behold to stockholders, are often driven by the bottom up, rather than from the top down — with sometimes surprising results which can shift the character of a brand overnight. Such as would happen if Jobs said "have at it" and welcomed adult with open arms — what do you think the APP Store would look like in a year or two? But I digress...

Perhaps most interesting of all is that Chatroulette really is the brainchild of a Russian teenager who continues to operate the site out of his childhood bedroom in his parent's Moscow home. Not the product of some belabored boardroom antics, Chatroulette really is simply "what's cool" from a young, cosmopolitan perspective that reflects today's youth culture.

Far more heavily trafficked, but obviously not fulfilling all of its audience's needs, are Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and myriad other social networks that also offer real world reality — where any Tom, Dick, Harry or Jane can become a star for the night —all of which provides ample fodder for adult consumers to explore.

Did I mention the "free" part? No piracy needed here — these folks are happily churning it out as fast as they can, and doing so with often surprising quality. And today's consumers are noticing — much to the detriment of traditional online adult entertainment websites that have failed to evolve to meet current demand.

The trick at this point is to take a new or existing project and transform it into a non-"porn" arena in which porn is still the product. Sex sells, they say, and that statement is true and always will be, regardless of whether or not porn will always sell — knowing the difference and being able to do something about it, will separate those next generation players who will develop new and innovative adult entertainment offers. Remember, the market has changed and for a whole variety of reasons, including some consumers being afraid to visit "porn sites" due to previous bad experiences, media sensationalism or the word-of-mouth of friends — but that doesn't mean they do not want to be titillated or won't pay for the privilege — just lead them to a comfortable source.