Arguably, the Web’s first Porn 2.0 site was Pornotube. Founded in July of 2006 by the Adult Entertainment Broadcasting Network, the X-rated take on Youtube only needed two months to break into Alexa’s top 250 highest-traffic websites, and has been a permanent fixture there since then. Pornotube, like all good Web 2.0 business models, generates it’s content from it’s community. Users are encouraged to upload videos, comment on and rate the videos of others, and compile lists of favorites. Unlike the traditional model of subscription-based web sites, Pornotube offers it’s content free to anyone who cares to type in their URL, relying on advertising to fund itself. To keep bandwidth use manageable and to facilitate fast loading, videos that are uploaded are limited to 10 minutes in length and 100 megabytes in size, and (as with Youtube) are compressed after upload to the Flash .FLV format, which allows for quick playing in browsers and can reduce a ten minute video to as little as twenty megabytes, while still maintaining an acceptable level of video quality.
Betting (correctly) that the Pornotube model would become massively successful, clones such as XTube and Youporn sprung into action mere weeks after the launch of Pornotube. While Xtube began more or less as a clone of Pornotube, and still maintains that fundamental structure, it has over time tended more towards a niche of becoming a community site for amateur exhibitionists and swingers to meet and swap videos and pictures with each other. Most of it’s content is still free to anyone who visits, but users may choose to password-protect their videos and pictures, giving access only to people they approve ahead of time. Youporn also was more or less a clone of Pornotube, but it added something that many Pornotube users much desired – the ability to save the videos to your hard drive for offline viewing, as opposed to just watching them in your browser. Pornotube and Xtube videos could (and still can) be saved by using tools such as Download Helper, but it was discouraged by the sites and they would often move to block the use of such tools during their upgrades of the site. It is likely that the ability to save movie files is a central factor in Youporn moving ahead of Pornotube and Xtube in the Alexa traffic rankings to become the most visited Web 2.0 porn site on the internet.
Even before the explosion of Porn 2.0 sites, free online storage sites such as Rapidshare and Megaupload were well known and used for hosting pornographic videos which were exchanged on message boards. However, they offered only downloads of files, and there was no way to stream the videos or to preview them unless someone uploaded screen captures of it along with the video link. Both sites still provide free file hosting and are still widely used for large porn files, but Megaupload has also leveraged it’s position as popular porn host to create a streaming video sites similar to Pornotube. Called Megarotic, it offers streaming FLV versions of the Windows Media files hosted on it’s servers. This offers the advantage of either watching in browser, or downloading the file. Certain other file storage sites such as YourFileHost are catering exclusively to the new free porn phenomenon, used solely as hosts for video sites like YourAmateurPorn and Pornminded.
The tremendous success of this new form of porn delivery has spawned countless imitators over the last two years. Sites like PornHost, Pornative, Yutuvu, DiabloBabes, EVideoPorn, ENAddict, Useless Junk and Shufuni all have a streaming Flash video structure similar to that of the original Pornotube format.
In fact, there is so much free porn out there now that it is a bit overwhelming. It can be hard to pick through all these sites and figure out what is worth watching! This has created a niche for porn aggregators. At present, a lot of them just link to as many videos as they can on popular video sites with just a screencap or two and the ability to make comments on the post. Examples of popular sites such as this are Chupa Tolly, Eroxia and Megarotic Video. Other sites go a step farther. Fantasti.cc has it’s users rate and comment on videos from other video sharing sites, and links that are the most highly rated get moved to the front of the pages. Porn blogs have arisen that feature videos that the author has selected as being high quality. Blogs like Prawn showcase good quality free porn from a variety of sources using screencaps and video previews as well as detailed descriptions, while certain others specialize in a particular niche, for example Desi Pron Stars, which concentrates on videos and pictures of Indian women having sex and Smutrocket, which features professional porn stars. You can also find forums where links to videos are exchanged along with screencaps, such as Phun.org and PornBB. The old fashioned methods of file exchange have gotten a boost from the Porn 2.0 revolution as well; sites like PureTNA track torrents with comments, screen captures and tags as well as community ratings.
Free porn faces challenges from the traditional, established porn industry. Porn 2.0 sites rely heavily on amateur content, some of it made by exhibitionist enthusiasts, and some of it private videos that were leaked to the internet at some point. This does leave open the possibility of lawsuits, particularly from celebrities who have had famous sex tapes circulated on the sites. While many of these sites now require uploaders to provide documentation of right of ownership of the materials on demand, there are still loads of unauthorized videos circulating widely through all these networks. Copyrighted porn featuring professional stars can also often be found on these sites. Sometimes these videos are uploaded by their creators as promotional material (and some distributors have become hated for flooding Porn 2.0 sites with tiny preview vids for their pay sites), but there are also a lot of unauthorized files floating around.
Given these things, the Porn 2.0 bonanza may not last forever, at least not in it’s current form. But it is in full swing right now, so porn enthusiasts (and the advertisers who make a killing off the traffic) are certainly enjoying it while it lasts.
