In Search of Porn 2.0

Ars Technica has an interesting article on how the pornography industry, one of the prime technological innovators in the recent years, is having trouble keeping up with the latest technology:

The industry often credited with being the driving force behind (no pun intended) new technologies is now suffering from them. The pornography industry, which has long been growing alongside the Internet since the early days, has hit a wall in recent years. DVD sales and rentals have dropped by 15 to 25 percent in the last year, according to industry estimates, and some believe that it could fall further if the industry doesn't catch up with new online trends.

What's the driving force behind this change? As more and more of the general public comes online, they are finding newer and cheaper ways to get their adult content fix. Just like the masses have flocked to sites like YouTube to watch professional clips from their favorite TV shows, video blogs, crazy stunts, and amateur movies, the adult audience has ditched DVDs and pay-per-view television to flock to similar sites. For example, PornoTube is a user-submitted video site of growing popularity that functions in the same way that YouTube does, complete with free, streaming videos.

Not just that, but increasing broadband speeds and wider adoption means that folks who once merely watched adult content are now able to create and upload it easily to sites like PornoTube for a fraction—or none—of the cost that it takes to make a professional video. "People are making movies in their houses and dragging and dropping them," CEO of adult payment processing site GoGoBill.com Harvey Kaplan told the New York Times. "It's killing the marketplace."

While online revenue for the professional adult industry has never been something to sneeze at, AVN Media Network's Paul Fishbein added that growth in the online space isn't happening quickly enough to make up for the drop in video sales—USA Today reports that Internet-based pornography sales grew by only 14 percent in the last year. Professional studios told both publications that they are attempting to catch up with the shift in public consumption trends by selling more online downloads and revamping their web sites to be more useable and professional. Some are hoping that the "quality" of their professional videos will win out with the public over those produced by amateurs. "We use good-quality lighting and very good sound," Red Light District president David Joseph told the New York Times, yet the company reports a sales drop of 30 percent over the last two years.

Google Wants Your Info

Google's technological ambitions continue to grow. I have to admire their foresight even as its increasing scope makes me uneasy.

Google's ambition to maximise the personal information it holds on users is so great that the search engine envisages a day when it can tell people what jobs to take and how they might spend their days off.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said gathering more personal data was a key way for Google to expand and the company believes that is the logical extension of its stated mission to organise the world’s information.

Asked how Google might look in five years’ time, Mr Schmidt said: “We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms will get better and we will get better at personalisation.

“The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ”

The race to accumulate the most comprehensive database of individual information has become the new battleground for search engines as it will allow the industry to offer far more personalised advertisements. These are the holy grail for the search industry, as such advertising would command higher rates.

Mr Schmidt told journalists in London: “We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don’t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google’s expansion.”

He said Google’s newly relaunched iGoogle service, which allows users to personalise their own Google search page and publish their own content, would be a key feature.

New Digs

I haven't logged in to Blogger and lo and behold, they've upgraded it on me. Looks like Google has finally added categories as well, thus obviating my need for my custom hack I wrote some time ago.