Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
On Pornhubs side, it's essentially a steal. They could very well foster a good atmosphere when it comes to porn and then offer through their mindgeek advertising platform access to Tumblr for their marketing affiliates.
These marketing affiliates spend ALOT of money on ads and it's very profitable if you know what you are doing.
If they started to get their own studios or their affiliates in creating films (actresses) in the recording space to use Tumblr to blog and not use twitter. Again, this would drive engagement by quite a margin.
There is so many things Pornhub could do here to make hundreds of millions off the back of Tumblr and they have the management to do it.
[0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/verizon-looking-sell-tumblr-...
Of course, Tumblr needed a sheriff but they chose a nuclear weapon and the rest is history.
Working in the adult content space will get your business blacklisted from mainstream content. No one is going to have official relationships or work on exclusive deals for your platform if their content is going to be side by side with pornography, or even perceived to be alongside it.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/11/media/verizon-oath-valuat...
So much for Verizon's content empire. And to think this was the reason they began putting super-cookies into everyone's computers. Good riddance!
First, they have tons of verified accounts with revshare ala YouTube monetization at the same or better rates / view.
Second, MindGeek owns all the tube sites and all the premium sites. Them and advertising networks like TrafficJunky are the equivalent Google Ads for the adult industry.
The premium sites are heavily affiliate marketed to the tune of mid $xx per free signup, or $x per email, or massive mid xx% rev share for life of a paid signup.
MindGeek and the premium sites give out all the content or upload themselves the content on the tube sites.
Furthermore most videos and metadata is syndicated through standard feeds so all the tube sites have the same stuff.
Just standard funnel / marketing / sales process.
I am not making judgement on any actually illegal content that might be there or actually copyrighted stuff; but really it seems the vast majority of it is allowed to be there.
I mean that it would be a natural place for people to publish all kinds of videos if they didn't like another video platform and didn't mind having their videos surrounded by pornography, and especially if they didn't care about monetization.
but it doesn't have anything at all. For example try searching for "review" and you will (NSFW obviously) get a page full of actual reviews: of sex toys, only. Nothing else. click around all you want, it will only be sex-related.
Why is this? any other platform you can think of has parts that are just using the platform as a technical solution for distribution and not really on brand for that platform.
maybe I'm wrong but I've looked a few times but can't find anything. how does this happen?
There's also a Pornhub meme community. Brightly colored videos of dancing Shrek heads and so on - on Pornhub!
But I don't think there are many non-pornographic content creators who want to publish to a porn site.
But something that makes me roll my eyes the hardest is when an indie dev makes a single post to /r/gaming and the gamers complain about advertising. As if that subreddit isn't one constant advertisement for the top three games out at one moment. But just launder your ads and gamers eat it up.
A dev posting their own content for once should be some of the most welcomed content. It's usually accompanied by Q&A and insights into the design process, the rare opportunity to actually talk to the creator of a game on that subreddit. Sad to see so many people attack it because it's just obvious advertisement.
Something seems very miscalibrated.
I disagree with this. There are thousands of Indie developers out there trying to win the game programming lottery, and the main tool at their disposal is posting on sites like reddit or spamming on twitter. The result is that most of this content is low quality and of little interest to the broader gaming community.
To put it differently, for every Vlambeer there are legions producing low quality spam that no one wants to see.
My guess is that the professional community, people that earn money manipulating/contributing paid-content to Reddit, is quite big. Or, at least, their impact is really big. Most people are just readers and Reddit professionals have time, motivation and knowledge to game the system.
I have fun reading Reddit. And I read it very often. But, I do not trust all the enthusiasm about any movie/service/app or similar that the community generates. It is usually over the top and not very useful to actually get a good idea of the quality of such a product.
I think that as a society we need to develop new mechanisms to deal with the situation. Probably regulation is one of them. But, for people to able to understand that not everything in the internet is true is also important. It will take time, people still think that reality shows are real, but I think that is feasible.
I'm /r/OutOfTheLoop... what happened that Hail Corporate was killed?
As has happened with other subs, it began to be full of extreme opinions on one side and the reasonable posts were downvoted in the other.
So, you end up with a toxic environment where it is difficult to have a rational conversation.
I am really grateful for the moderation done in Hacker News. I have seen also that kind of strategy tried here. Controversial posts being promoted to the main page and fake extreme opinions show up in the comments. But, the post is flagged a later removed. That stops the anger to spread to real users.
Killed how? They've got 168,000 subscribers and seem to be fairly active.
I have two "modes" though which I use Youtube. The first is searching for the answer to a specific question such as how to change the radiator on my car or a good blueberry pie recipe. The second is I might enjoy a particular "personality" like Joe Rogan or Jimmy Dore. I don't want to subscribe to car/cooking topics. Nor do I want to subscribe to MMA, general politics, or general comedy. This new model doesn't work for me. I wonder if I will be converted eventually.
If topics were like radio stations for videos or music (i.e. genre based topics), I would use that.
I generally use YouTube as a reference book, where I look up some information. The exception is music, where I treat it more like a radio station.
But content-wise, it does not feel much different than the usual "recommended videos" section.
There's some overcorrection due to wishful thinking and overestimating the difficulty of lying, but the underlying reasoning is mostly valid.
Tumblr is not really my thing and neither is porn, but I have been dismayed by the seeming trend to criminalize and stamp out all expressions of consenting adult sexual behavior on the internet. It would be nice to see some successful push back.
Pornstars are heroes for kids nowadays, we should be trying to avoid kids getting their sex education from PornHub, not favor even more exposure.
Just curious, can you give me a list of good resources for sex education?
I spent a year in therapy in my teens and 2.5 years in my twenties. I read stacks of research-based books to educate myself.
It took me decades to learn to have sex safely without being some man's victim.
Knowing how birth control works is important. Knowing how STDs are transmitted: also important.
Knowing that you can, in fact, get pregnant even when the girl is on top: important.
These are things not understood by children who go through the public school systems in some of the less liberal states.
I can tell you that PornHub isn't one of them, though.
There are certainly downsides. For example, it can lead to various unrealistic expectations concerning looks and predilections of a partner.
But my understanding of life, the universe and everything is that porn serves to fill a much needed role in basic sex education that we have yet to find another way to fill. Furthermore, comments here suggest that bringing back NSFW Tumblr will be different from actual commercial porn. The manner in which it is likely to be different is likely to be a positive antidote to some of the problems porn does have.
NSFW Tumblr is likely to be ordinary people expressing themselves without looking or acting like porn stars. It is much more likely to provide realistic expectations for what a partner is likely to look like, as well as serve as a space for personal exploration for sexual expression.
I got particularly sad when I read about that Australian 16-year-old that has to shit in a bag for the rest of her life because she and her friends wanted to re-enact a rought-sex gangbang they saw on PornHub.
I also don't think porn explains what and where a clitoris is, or maybe we're watching different kinds of porn.
In Muslim countries it's illegal.
I hope PornHub does buy Tumblr! Can you imagine how quickly all the corporate blogs would scramble off of the platform to avoid association with a porn site!?
It's like saying corporations don't want to associate with the internet because there's porn on it.
For example, how would you like it if "beyoncescock" or "dildoreo" (both real usernames, by the way) were to reblog your serious announcement from your serious company? Now those usernames are associated with your company's name when you search for it on the web.
I used Tumblr, and didn't know it was used for porn until the complaining when Verizon banned it.
PH already has paying premium users, so maybe would be just something to keep them on PH-related websites through the end of their refractory period, hopefully directing them back to PH when they start getting horny again
Advertising is not the only way to generate revenue, and even if they want to go the advertising route, there are non-mainstream advertisers that may be interested.
Then eventually the big studios just started buying the toob sites and cut out the middle. Most of them serve a subset of studio content or clips. Tumblr's limited video size/length really helped contribute to this model. Most people watch the clips, but the people who buy can get sucked into a lot of hidden subscriptions they forget to uncheck, or even direct up-selling they'll intentionally select.
I mentioned it in a different comment: I miss the content that YouTube used to have before they started punishing the stuff that advertisers objected to (through demonetization and refusal to recommend them).
Far too many YouTube channels now are clearly walking on eggshells and being very careful about what they say and do. It makes the videos less interesting and informative and more like traditional broadcast TV.
There are still channels that don't sweat demonetization at all, and those tend to be the only ones I watch anymore, but they're getting few and far between.
They would just clone youtube—they have the exact same relationship with advertisers. I don’t see that gaining any traction.
The issue with YouTube in recent years, is that it's been treating its content creators and viewers as "product" and the advertisers as the users. YouTube has been pandering to executives in media and their particular thought bubbles while throwing users and content creators under the bus. (Or doing things specifically to increase centralized control for the sake of pandering to advertisers, to the detriment of users and content creators.)
Pornhub could well do better. (Or they could repeat the same mistakes.)
Advertisers don't want their brand associated with content they find questionable. They pulled their advertising or at least threatened to. This lead to the "Adpocalypse".
A lot of creators argue that content is unfairly or incorrectly demonetized. That's an area where a competitor could improve. The competitor would still have to deal with the fact that advertisers are sitting on the money and want a say in how their ads are showing up.
While obviously they'd restore adult content to Tumblr, my guess is they'd keep Tumblr as a somewhat mainstream brand, and not let it be too directly associated with their existing properties to maintain mainstream appeal. A YouTube competitor would fall along the same lines.
Although we all know a few people here and there who don't know YouTube is owned by Google, the majority of people do understand the YouTube + Google/Alphabet relationship.
I think this is very tech centric view. I asked my wife (tech savy enough but doesn't work in the industry) and she didn't have any idea who owned Youtube, and had never heard of Alphabet.
I know it's only one data point, but I think it's easy to be blinkered when actually the truth is probably that most people outside of tech have no idea about tech company relationships.
It's certainly something to keep in mind during the market research phase, but I don't think this means that all the possible competitors are destined to lose money if they make an attempt at competing.
I can't remember seeing "real porn" on Tumblr.
Pornhub is leveraged to overcome most of the difficulties in that market, which makes tumblr more valuable to them than it is to most companies.
Put another way, most buyers would proceed to (continue to) destroy a significant portion of tumblrs value in order to be willing to operate it. Pornhub would not.
warning possible triggering content ahead Example, this one guy ran a blog called "Rapebait Academy"(CNC fetish, Google if you're interested I'm not gonna get into that here) where he could post pictures and videos of him with the girls he would meet of Tumblr and what they got up to together(with their consent of course). And anyone who was involved in that little community on Tumblr knew the guy and who you were talking about if you mentioned his name, or at least his blog.
So there's definitely people interested in making content on the platform, people interested in consuming the content, and there's always gonna be people willing to pay out the nose for personalized niche specific content, which will be easy given how Tumblr is a directly creator-to-user platform.
https://slate.com/technology/2014/10/mindgeek-porn-monopoly-...
It's not illegally uploaded, MG owns most of the underlying copyright, and they do revenue share with others.
People pay.
PornHub now offers purchasable videos now competing with manyvids who owned the space before.
There is also a premium subscription ala Twitch with monthly recurring. Live, a chaturbate competitor, with tokes and everything.
Really they are a huge industry powerhouse with a large marketing and PR department. They are also pretty good with tech. It reminds me of how Netflix or Facebook stumbled into being a top tier tech company just due to business needs.
See https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/verizon-defends-decisi...
....Thanks for that.. LOL
There's a lot of porn on reddit, but I don't think twice about saying I post there. But if it was owned by a porn site I might think twice about how I define the site / mention it.
It's like Reddit; yes it allows adult content, but since you're not forced to view subreddits that allow it, no one cares.
"Someone, somewhere is thinking thoughts I don't approve of!"
And I don't think the site's culture veering off into Puritanism as it is now will be good for it in the long run. If there were a better site, I'd leave for it - but the only real alternative is Twitter, which combines all the worst aspects of LinkedIn, Instagram, and 4chan.
Who knows! Maybe anyone will use Dreamwidth ever. But I think Tumblr's lack of distinction between top-level posts and comments is a good feature - there were a few blogs, back when blogs were a thing, that I mostly read because they had a few good commenters. The problem is that it enables a lot of abuse, but stricter moderation and better features could prevent this - Tumblr wasn't designed for text at all, and it really shows.
(You could edit anyone else's post while reblogging it until relatively recently, when someone replaced a John Green post with a graphic monologue about liking dick and [so everyone assumed, at least] he complained.)
> I’m fairly sure if they took porn off the internet, there’d only be one website left, and it’d be called "Bring back the porn!"
They'll make a bundle.
I'm not sure Verizon's "buy high, ruin it, sell low" strategy is going to pay off.
The reality is, way too many of us are more prudish than we should be, and we are all humans after all.
Adult sites are perfectly legal.
Also US is a very religious country (some parts) compared to other western nations. So that’s where some of this comes from.
People interact online through a select few pieces of tech: smart phone apps, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter. Just saying "adult sites exist" is like telling people to drive over to the wrong side of town and shuffle into a seedy porn theater. The malware-laced pop-up ads, and the lack of creative, multifaceted sexual expression, is what happens when you effectively banish a form a culture from the commons.
Today's problems have nothing to do with people reading, imagining, creating, and thinking. Problems in 2019 have to do with people engaging specifically in groupthink and "othering."
Censorship, exclusion, and suppression do not reduce groupthink. Rather, those actions increase groupthink. Those actions create hothouses of concentrated groupthink insulated from criticism, skepticism, and the moderation of reality. (Also, if some honest introspection is done, one often finds that those actions are themselves motivated by groupthink.)
A live and let-live society where people are free to self-express lets people learn in the context of a reality more complicated and richer than just themselves. A live and let-live society lets people transcend their own small circle. It is the best antidote to the small minded groupthink that creates oversimplified, dehumanizing caricatures of people and reality.
It's suppression and censorship that causes people to retreat into such small circles, allowing groupthink to fester.
Given the events of the past several years, I highly doubt the people with the ad dollars are innocent of free speech suppression. EDIT: Specifically, the people asking for YouTube suppression through "advertising" concerns were tied in with the people coordinating hit pieces against YouTube content.
That has nothing to do with their suppression of even mainstream news and commentary, like Phillip DeFranco.
(I'm surprised there aren't any companies pursuing this! I thought Gab was going to, but it looks like they monetized with pro subscriptions [instead?].)