'Adult' sites drive many Web innovations

Erotic imagery has been found in cave paintings from 5000 B.C. and in ancient Egyptian and Grecian art. Gutenberg's movable type, initially developed to print Bibles, led to the first "dirty" books, just as the daguerreotype begot naughty photos (which were often mailed to lonely Civil War troops) and silent movies spawned stag films. 

Sometimes this lust for lust is the force that takes technology to a higher, ultimately more useful level. It is credited with jump-starting the video industry, for instance, establishing a mainstream market for VCRs. 

Pornography is obviously an evolutionary step in the development of all media. "Porn doesn't go away," says Jeannine Parker of the Internet Developers Association, "but it's not the entire Web or the whole story." 

Computer porn has long been available, but a few years ago it was largely housed on private, membership-only bulletin board services. Some of these BBSs made a profit; most only broke even, says Nancy Tamosaitis, author of The Penthouse Guide to Cybersex (General Media International, $29.98). 

The Web, however, has thrown open the doors to a new world. Customers who might be embarrassed about browsing in an adult store quickly discover that the Web's erogenous zones are private and open 24 hours a day. 

"You can look at anything and not worry about being ostracized," Tamosaitis says. 

But online adult content has come a long way from the BBS days. 

The newest and apparently hottest Web innovation combines video and interactive chat. Customers typically pay $49.95 for 30 minutes to talk by phone or keyboard to strippers and sexual performers who are paid about $20 an hour. 

Men (this is typically a guy thing) can communicate their most profound thoughts and suggestions to the nude dancers, requesting specific gyrations and acts. 

The video is primitive and impersonal, an eerily spasmodic display of 10 still pictures per minute. But the quality and speed of Internet video is improving rapidly and may eventually dominate the Netsex market, entrepreneurs say. 

That's increasingly likely to happen as companies in other branches of the adult industry venture onto the Web. 

IEG, a Seattle-based company that has plunged its profits from phone sex into the marketing of live sex videos on a dozen of its sites, expects to gross $20 million this year. Smaller operators typically pull in several thousand dollars a week by doing nothing more than carrying advertising for other sex sites. 

Last September, a subtle shift in how advertising revenue is paid out sparked a surge in new adult sites. 

Up to that time, operators were paid a flat fee for carrying ads, based on rough estimates of their traffic. Then a site called CyberErotica began paying 2.5 to 5 cents for every customer who clicked on its banner advertisements. Paying site owners for "click-throughs" immediately opened up advertising revenue to anybody, even the smallest free sites, says Beth Mansfield, owner of the popular Netsex directory Persian Kitty, who derives her income from click-throughs. 

Innovations such as pay-per-entry, live streaming video, password management and credit card fraud control are being fine-tuned by Netsex businesses that, given the fierce competition, depend on customer service, computerized efficiency and rapid technological advancement. Like it or not, says Mario Carmona, president of XPics, sex merchants are the pioneers who are teaching the lessons of successful Web commerce. 

"The adult side is the cutting edge," Carmona says. He predicts that emerging consumer products such as virtual reality will first gain popularity as virtual sex. 

"We're the ones who are creating new technologies and building the structure of the Internet," he says, "because we're the ones who are making the money it takes to do it." 

By USA TODAY 

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