Although few at the top of the IT industry would like to publicly
admit it, adult entertainment companies have been first to market with many of the technologies which are now seen as cutting edge by mainstream businesses.While the likes of Amazon were struggling to generate even modest revenues during the dot-com boom, adult sites were turning over billions of dollars and even generating profits. Because much of the adult industry operates free of the scrutiny to which other industries are subject, there is more freedom to exploit new technologies and use them in groundbreaking ways.
"While you might not call it innovation, the online adult industry
was the first to turn a profit on the Internet. This focus on making
money, which was sorely lacking elsewhere during the late 1990s, led
the industry to pioneer billing solutions," says Mark Pace, president
and co-founder of Bondage.com. "The billing gateway, something that
lets many small businesses conduct online transactions, was designed
for adult sites, for example".
Bondage.com
Other advances included software to enable customers to use multiple
billing providers so that transactions would continue to be processed
even if one or more of the operators were having issues. "The
industry's biggest problems hang around actually getting paid. Making
it easy for someone to pay you seems like a no-brainer, but that
simple, small transaction of money really consumes a lot of time for
every company. Having a transaction take even a few seconds longer than
normal can take a cut off the top quickly," says Pace.
But billing is not the only area in which adult entertainment has
led the field and, in fact, the sector has nigh-on created markets for
new technologies, such as streaming video and digital rights
management. "While problematic, digital rights management is widely
used in the industry and has saved huge sums of money by preventing the
pirating of content. The adult entertainment business is particularly
cost-sensitive and, therefore, there is a willingness to adapt and push
new technologies to cut costs," says Gary Thoulouis, brand manager at
Private Media Group.
Digital rights management
But this alone does not explain why the sector has been at the
forefront of technical innovation for so long. Paul Jackson, principal
analyst at Forrester Research, believes that there is a combination of
factors behind porn providers' pioneering spirit.
Firstly, there is a naturally high demand for adult content online,
which made it relatively easy to translate into hard cash — at least,
easier than pet food or toys. This ready-made market enabled
adult-related...
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