March 18th, 2008

Ron Jeremy lashes out at streaming porn sites

[photopress:ronjeremyyyy.jpg,full,center] Yes, I have my very own photo of Ron Jeremy Ron Jeremy, Thespian, doesn’t like that sites such as YouPorn are sucking the adult entertainment industry dry. It seems Mr. Jeremy, known for his roles in such works of art as Afro Erotica 12 and Aunt Peg Goes to Hollywood, thinks such Web sites are destroying the industry and ought to be shut down. (Never mind the amount of BitTorrent traffic dedicated to sharing pornography.) → Read More

January 22nd, 2008

Eroticism Comes to Microblogging with Boobik?

The tenets of Web 2.0 are not without their pornographic, or otherwise erotic, applications. We’ve covered PornoTube and EroShare, both of which are sites for user-generated porn. Now we’ve come across a site called Boobik? (yes, with a question mark in its name, and no, NSFW). If PornoTube is a YouTube of porn and EroShare is a Flickr of porn, then perhaps it’s best to describe Boobik? as a Twitter of porn. To be fair, Boobik? doesn’t explicitly bill itself as a place for sharing user-generated pornography. Rather, it places the emphasis on social networking (the Facebook of porn?): boobik is a place to meet people the sexy way. You can get to know people through them sharing and broadcasting short experiences, thoughts and fantasies. By that we mean what they did last night, just now (hand in skirt under the desk), with whom and how many times). And don’t forget them pictures as well… But the result, I imagine, will be mostly just to share pornographic material with others. The site’s frontpage shows a series of microblog posts, some of which contain photos with nudity. You can post text, photos, and video embeds with Boobik?, apparently of any rating level (the terms of service doesn’t preclude explicit material). Want to share erotic thoughts on the go? You can also post to the site from a mobile phone, IM account, or email. Thanks goes to Orli Yakuel for discovering this site. CrunchBase Information Boobik Eroshare Pornotube Twitter Flickr YouTube Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

December 11th, 2007

Porn biz cracking down on piracy (no pun intended)

It wasn’t a question of if, but when huh? The porn industry is finally sick of losing money to piracy and is starting to crack down on sites like PornoTube, which has just had a lawsuit filed against it by Vivid Entertainment Group. → Read More

October 24th, 2007

Porn Set Free: Age Record Keeping Deemed Unconstitutional

Creators of porn websites have been set free of onerous confirmation of age record keeping laws, after the Unites States Court of Appeals found that the law requiring the keeping of these records was unconstitutional. Previously, porn websites hosted in the United States had to keep records confirming that all performers shown on their sites were of a legal age. More recently there has been some suggestion that these requirements would be extended to all sites showing porn, potentially destroying sites such as YouPorn.com and Pornotube.com (both NSFW) who rely on user generated content and therefore would not have access to records. A majority ruling of the Appeals Court found that “the purpose, and the legislative history of the statute make clear that Congress was concerned with all child pornography and considered record keeping important in battling all of it, without respect to the creator’s motivation” in that it impedes free speech rights. Law.com notes that “the decision is a significant First Amendment ruling that directly implicates the controversial subjects of legal adult pornography and illegal child pornography.” For anyone in a Web 2.0 related porn business, it’s simply a sign that they have a future. See our overview of porn sites in this space here. CrunchBase Information YouPorn Pornotube Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

August 11th, 2007

New Generation Adult Sites Roundup

Online porn is usually a cutting edge industry and it is always all about the money. The industry is often first to the Internet with new features that eventually trickle down to mainstream consumer sites. The latest wave of web innovation, though, was centered squarely on consumer sites. And the porn guys have adapted many of those features to create massively successful second generation adult content sites. PornoTube was the first we came across, in mid 2006. Others, like EroShare, have followed. We also mentioned Red Light District, a virtual world, in a recent roundup post. Go2Web2 has just posted a roundup of some additional ones. Some of these have fantastic names – MegaRotic, Fantasti.cc, NippleByte, and StumblePorn, for example. Many of these sites are little more than lead generation tools for more traditional porn sites (and if you are going to visit them, put on some protection first). But it is fascinating to see the industry try anything new to get new money in. Lots of competition and lots of money drive all of this. CrunchBase Information Pornotube Eroshare Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

May 12th, 2007

Internet Pornography Stats

Check out this video from Good Magazine that shows a number of stats about the Internet pornography industry, in an “almost” not safe for work format. It is staggering how much actual money flows through porn and how many people are involved in the industry: 89% of porn is created in the U.S. $2.84 billion in revenue was generated from U.S. porn sites in 2006 $89/second is spent on porn 72% of porn viewers are men 260 new porn sites go online daily We’ve covered a handful of adult-related startups here. These include a porn-specific browser called HeatSeek (that has connections to Sequoia-funded Songbird), a user-generated porn YouTube clone called Pornotube, as well as a few others like EroShare and ScrewTube. Usually the porn industry innovates first and key features make their way to more mainstream sites. But over the last couple of years, many of the new ideas around web applications, like user generated content, video sharing, etc., went mainstream first and are now hitting the porn sites. CrunchBase Information Pornotube Eroshare Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

July 25th, 2006

YouTube has Porn Clone

The porn industry has always had an “early adopter” model. We’ve covered a few porn related sites that have adopted new web features in the past (notably Heatseek and Social Porn). PornoTube (Note: NOT WORK SAFE), which integrates YouTube-like features, is the most recent example of the trend. While YouTube has a clear policy banning porn, PornoTube has a policy that is just the opposite. PornoTube offers on demand Flash videos (our sponsor Adobe will be proud I’m sure) of user uploaded pornography, including video, audio and photgraphs. The site is surprisingly well designed and has social features like rating, commenting, etc. All videos are tagged and can be browsed via a tag cloud or by straight or gay content. There are RSS feeds for various categories. Videos can also be embedded into other sites. The site is free for users. For more technically saavy users, bittorent has long been a source of free pornography. But PornoTube, which is usable by anyone with a computer, could be disruptive to sites that are charging for similar content. I imagine PornoTube will have similar copyright issues as YouTube, however, and will have to pull that content down over time. They even have a “beta” in their logo. Check it out, if it’s your thing. CrunchBase Information Pornotube Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

Real-Time
Crunchbase

Durham Graphene Science — Received £1.2M in Seed funding from IP Group Plc
2.13.2012
Durham Graphene Science — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
2.13.2012
Cidade Internet — Acquired by Populis.
2.1.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
Cidade Internet — Acquired by Populis.
2.1.2012
2.1.2012
2.9.2012
LetsBuy.com — Acquired by Flipkart.
2.9.2012
Cocoafish — Acquired by Appcelerator.
2.9.2012
Durham Graphene Science — Received £1.2M in Seed funding from IP Group Plc
2.13.2012
ClevrU — Received $550k in Unattributed funding
2.10.2012
OpenLabel — Received $80k in Seed funding from Peter Kirwan, Tim Drees, and Doug Taylor
2.10.2012
sneakpeeq — Received $2.67M in Unattributed funding from Bain Capital Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures, Keith Rabois, Tim Kendall, Mike Murphy, and Vikas Gupta
2.10.2012
Noble Biomaterials — Received $8M in Series B funding from Northwater Capital, TL Ventures, and DuPont Capital Management
2.10.2012
2.13.2012
Peter Kirwan — Invested in OpenLabel.
2.10.2012
Doug Taylor — Invested in OpenLabel.
2.10.2012
Tim Drees — Invested in OpenLabel.
2.10.2012
Keith Rabois — Invested in sneakpeeq.
2.10.2012
Jive Software — Went public with stock symbol NASDAQ:JIVE.
2.3.2012
Durham Graphene Science — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
ClevrU — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
OpenLabel — Company added to CrunchBase
2.13.2012
Bookt — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Kigo.Net — Company added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Fit Freeway — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
2.12.2012
Metier HR - Cloud Based HR Process Automation Suite — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
TweepsMap — Product added to CrunchBase
2.12.2012
Wupbox account — Product added to CrunchBase
2.11.2012
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