Online Porn - The Technology Testbed?

DaveAtFraud writes "USA Today is running a only slightly tongue-in-cheek article pointing out that the on-line porn industry has become the technology testbed for innovative content delivery. On-line delivery of 'adult' content has been wrestling with issues such as digital rights management, video on-demand billing, wireless services, and geo-location software since long before these became issues for 'mainstream' content providers. Maybe having an adult content provider listed on your geek resume isn't so bad after all."

Comments

Very true

[sjhwilkes]

The company I work for hosts some of the largest porn sites on the web - we have 4 gigs - Internet, and all the latest Cisco toys: iSCSI SANs, 6500's with load balancing, IDS, and firewall modules, gig E everywhere, real-time geographical load distribution, you name it.

My last two gigs were Universal and Sony (I'm in LA) and both were tiny Internet environments compared to this.

Our SAN has 7TB of content so far & we're adding 1/2 a TB a month...

Re:Maybe it's because of their audience

[fatquack]

Being an adult webmaster myself I can assure you that our customers complain if something is wrong. But all the free porn makes up for a lot :-)
And it pays well too, so it should be a career option for all techies out there, seeing the current techjobmarket.

Re:Maybe it's because of their audience

[rampant mac]

"So here's an awkward question. How does one become an adult webmaster. I mean, aside from making a webpage and setting up the merchant stuff. Do you actually do shoots of the girls? Or do you just buy them from stock image porn dealer? The reason I ask is that I've seen many girls passed off as amateurs that are obviously not that I've seen all over the place on different sites, with different names. I'm really curious how that works. Also, how much money are we talking here? 6 figures? Upper 5 figures? Are there um...."fringe benefits"? I've searched around and have yet to find any kind of personal accounts of people who run these websites, but I am very interested in it."

Ok, I'll try to answer this...

To become an adult webmaster, don't do it for the money. It has to be something you're interested in (ha ha, joke's on me! Who isn't interested in porn?). Honestly though, you need to be passionate about the subject, otherwise it WILL get boring. There are thousands of TGPs & MGPs out there, so try to come up with something "different" to build hits.

Photo shoots are "interesting" to say the least. I have only been on one, and basically, it went like this:

Me: "Hi, glad you could show up. This is the photographer. Do you mind if we stick around for the shoot, to provide input?" (I was ABSOLUTELY lying through my teeth. I just wanted to see her naked.)

Her: "No."

"Ok, have fun!" At that point I had to leave the room. Stock images are great for original content, but they can be expensive. Photo sets range from $20 to $50+ per set, and buying new content on a daily basis is immensely expensive. If your sponsor/advertiser revenue can support it, no problem. I usually hit usenet for image sets, as I can get untagged images for free.

Strippers are seriously one of your best points of contact. They have no problem taking off their clothes, and usually aren't afraid to pose in front of a camera. Usual billing rates are $100 to $300+ per hour, depending on the "talent".

No webmaster wants to talk about revenue, but IF (and that's a HUGE if) I filled all my advertising slots, I would clear in excess of 22k per month. I have NEVER come close to filling my advertising slots, so for now, the point is moot.

No, there are no "fringe benefits" that I know of. Other webmasters may operate differently from myself though. I'm married, and the very thought of John Wayne Bobbit brings up horrific images. You do the math on that one.