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Pornhub Offers To Buy Vine Because 'Six Seconds Is More Than Enough' (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Earlier on Thursday Twitter announced it was ending Vine's short run, and the adult site was quick to come to the rescue -- maybe. In a letter from Pornhub VP Corey Price to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that was shared with CNET, Price lays out the rationale: "We figure since Twitter has dropped (Vine) and is having significant layoffs, that you and your stakeholders could benefit from a cash infusion from the sale of Vine. Not to mention we would be saving Vine gems like 'Damn Daniel,' 'Awkward Puppets' and many more." Pornhub also promises to "restore Vine to Its NSFW glory," saying that clips "of porn in six seconds is more than enough time for most people to enjoy themselves." Unless pointing out a company's recent hardships in a letter and sharing it with a reporter is the latest Silicon Valley negotiating tactic, it seems pretty clear that the offer is a tongue-in-cheek jab at Twitter and its decision to shutter the video looping platform that has caused so much joy and often humiliation. But who knows, maybe Twitter will be willing to deal with Pornhub.
A good article in The Economist magazine about how the porn business model has evolved on the internet, particularly focused on the recent rise of the porn tube industry:
http://www.economist.com/news/...
From the article, perhaps this is the anecdote you where thinking of:
"IT WAS 2012, and Fabian Thylmann's goal was world domination. The man who had put together Manwin, an emerging online-pornography giant, now controlled most of the top ten porn "tubes" - aggregators that, like YouTube, contain thousands of videos and are wildly popular, because much of their content is free. If he could get hold of the two biggest, XVideos and XHamster, he could put it all behind a pay barrier and build an online porn empire. If competitors emerged, he would buy them, too. What antitrust authority would rein in a monopolist in a business that upstanding people pretend does not exist?"
"But neither of his targets would sell. The French owner of XVideos is said to have turned down an offer of more than $120m with a scornful "Sorry, I have to go and play Diablo II." Mr Thylmann later sold out of Manwin (since renamed Mindgeek), after coming under investigation by tax authorities in Germany, his home country."