After jumping into the adult web industry, I found that all roads lead to Google. For an industry full of the most amazing innovators, this dependence on the 'Big Brother' search engines seems to be an anomaly, and one which has me wondering what could happen in the near future and what are the alternatives?
First up, we have the lawmakers and do-gooders breathing down our necks. With laws intended to punish wayward lawbreakers, but practically about to constrict the entire industry, you can be sure that very soon, somebody is going to come up with a set of rules for advertising porn on search engines, which in turn is going to make the search engine operators charge money for allowing porn, same as Visa is doing. Being so pathetically dependant on somebody is never helpful in the long run.
Add in the number of search engines coming up every day, the bigger operators buying up the smaller ones, the number of websites multiplying everyday and you reach a bursting point sooner or later. Pay per click search engines are the first sign that the operators are tapping into the website's pockets. Next comes registration fees. What's next - the search engines become affiliates, with 50% of all sales? How about this - today only the print and television media are divided on partisan lines. What happens if the search engines become biased on the basis of nationality, religion or try to influence the surfer base, just like CNN or The New York Times?
My point in all this is not to be a doomsday pessimist, but to put forward other ways and means to resolve the bottleneck between the websites and surfers. Let's take a look at a few of them, their pros and cons.
For all I know, there's only one adult broadcaster - sex.tv . One of the main forces driving this industry is the merging of communications technology. Television and the internet are very, very close to being merged with the hardware already in the market. The software providers who upgrade to bridge the gap first will hold sway over the market for a long time. If say, we have a multitude of broadcasters and a lot of content providers for hardcore sex on TV, then who's going to pay for membership on a website? Get 24 hour sex movies and programs on the websites before it reaches the television audience.
Uploading a dozen movies a month is very soon going to be obsolete. You could have talk shows about sex, doctors being interviewed, celebrities talking about their sexcapades, live sex, full length movies, advertisements (which would likely put a stop to all the headaches over popups), escorts showing off what they’ve got (which is much better than putting a few photos in a gallery), niche channels - the possibilities are endless. All it's going to take is a few big people putting their resources to develop the infrastructure.
The search engines have their own ways to decide which site gets top ranking. What's the best way to decide which site gets top billing, which site should appear on the first page? I'll tell you what's the best way - the best way is if a person or persons experienced in the industry, who knows a site's worth when he looks into it, decides where to put a site. So, if the adult webmasters union were to develop their own official search engine, pool all their listings, and based on their own knowledge and experience, rate the sites for surfers, that would be a fair way to go about it. Publicize the search engine on all member's sites and you're on your way.
This may seem a bit far fetched, but so was the mars rover poking around the rocks on mars, until a few days back. How about a virtual reality porn mall, with websites as virtual shops. The customer, using his virtual gear, walks in and browses around the shop, watching a porn star doing a naked strip dance or goes through a shelf of adult movies or to a live customer service representative fibbing his way to a commission (nothing like the personal touch). A guy could spend the whole night browsing the mall with his friends.
A few points to make: I'm pretty happy with the search engines the way they are right now, but I honestly believe that sooner or later, we're going to have to look at alternatives, and it might do well to look into them right now. What I have put up above are just my thoughts, nothing to take personally, so please look at it objectively and if you have anything to add to this article, please post it to the thread below:
