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I spotted an article relating too this in Baseline Magazine today while trying to catch up on my ‘real media’ reading.

There are arguments that the porn industry pioneered much of the commerce we see online today. Heck, I’d go so far as to say that the online adult industry has pioneered much of the technologies we now see online.

Such is the way with the evolution of online technologies and industries free sites are taking over and killing the paid predecessor.

Sites like YouPorn.com and RedTube.com, according too Alexa, are outranking mainstream sites like CNN and Weather.com (which speaks volumes about online mentality). Advertising seems to be ruling over the paid or subscription services… still.

Surely there isn’t the revenue in advertising that there is in subscriptions, however when offering a free site you don’t need to worry about people signing up and paying, they just need to visit. So, I guess you can offer a lesser quality service as long as it’s free and still monetize it.

With services such as YouPorn you don’t even have to worry about content – your users take care of that for you.

The strange thing is that the upper level of content on the free adult sites is provided by paid sites as a lengthily sample of sorts in an effort to purvey their goods and bring viewers to their sites from the free ones.

Is this actually working or are the ‘subscription’ sites excacerbating the issue by putting their ‘samples’ out there?

The porn industry isn’t the only one suffering in this way. There are others who once had a cornered market and are now suffering because others are giving it away like spyware, adware, anti-virus, computer support and more, not to mention the music and movies available online.

Is this simply online evolution and the way things just are or generally poor planning? What do you think?

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