In the 1970’s it was a major driving force behind the home-movie; it was a key (role?) player in the 1980’s battle between Betamax and VHS video; then once again, in 2006, industry insiders were left panting while the porn industry mused over who was going to win the Blue Ray Disc versus HD DVD frisson.
“As goes the porn industry, so goes entertainment generally and technology-based entertainment in particular,” says Bob Jacobson, and he’s very right. It’s been long accepted that a giant deciding factor in whether a new technology will be popular for entertainment-media use, is how well the porn industry ride it.
Ryan Caldwell also puts the quickie development of the internet and broadband down to the demand of porn, and there are many who might agree…
So, could porn providers again indicate the direction in which media, online entertainment and journalism will shimmy? Possibly.
There have been worries that, just like print media sales, even the rampant cash flow of the porn industry has taken a spanking of late by web 2.0.
Edward Helmore’s article for The Observer has industry sales down by as much as 50%, as online porn perusers find for free what they once paid for.
“Pirated pornography is flooding the internet while thousands of ‘amateurs’ post their activities on websites such as youporn.com and porntube” says Helmore.
“Despite social and professional stigmas a lot of people are putting themselves on the internet. It fits into this era of people expressing themselves,” Regina Lynn, sex drive columnist for Wired, adds in the same article.
Like the current state of journalism, the once untouchable porn industry is at threat from web 2.0, user generated content and online publishing tools, that have shifted the power of publishing from the media giants, into the hands of the consumers.
What are the players in porn going to do next? Go mobile, it seems.
With the release of Apple’s new iPhone 2.0 people can do it (or rather watch others do so) anywhere…on the train, a plane, al fresco…use your own imagination here.
Jeremy Caplan, writing for Time notes that while mobile phone porn has previously been racy texts and “moan tones,” but the iPhone’s video dexterity has seen content swing more towards pictures and short video clips. The internet speed of the iPhone 2.0 looks set to bond the two industries further.
Pornographers have taken the idea of being able to access, say, the news online from any workstation with a browser, to being able to access content from literally anywhere you happen to be with your internet-enabled mobile phone.
Mobile phone specific applications then, seem to be where journalism brands need to aim and shoot.
