Social media and websites such as Facebook and YouTube are now the leading activity on the Internet for most of the U.S. and Europe. What's interesting is that while the social networking sites are growing exponentially, the commerce that attempts to take advantage of them doesn't seem to be nearly as robust.
Pornography, for which Florida is likely the nation's hub at least with technology, has learned to adapt and change with the times to stay ahead. In fact, porn has been the leading edge of Web technology almost from day one. I would suspect that even when Al Gore and his scientist buddies were creating the Internet, more than one nudie picture got passed around.
In fact, most of the commonplace tech we see on websites now is thanks to porn's innovation. Geo-location software was invented by porn and quickly moved to online gambling and is now on everything from Google Maps to your iPhone. Nearly every innovation in video and audio streaming is thanks to porn too.
With the advent of YouTube and is popularity came porn knockoffs like
YouPorn. These have quickly grown and now major membership-based sites
are finding themselves being outclassed by amateur, user-content sites
and are shifting their models to match.
Some of the most
popular and creative websites are combining both
professionally-produced and user-produced offerings into websites that
interconnect in what's termed "segmented content." These are niche
sites that are all owned and operated by the same group and which
heavily cross-promote one another. Content from one will be on several
others, each within its own niche. Single-owner sites are working on
co-ops with others of similar focus to build networks of fee-based and
free content.
In social commerce, we see little of this. Single
sites are still attempting to build themselves up, alone, without
connecting to their competition in mutually-supporting ways.
Pornographers know that they aren't really competing with one another
in a traditional way and they've realized that working together can
build everyone up at once. The Bang Brothers network is a great example
of this in action.
Meanwhile, social commerce sites like Elance
and LinkedIn are often disconnected from one another and have little
interaction. A company I'm involved in right here in Florida, VOIS,
is working to combine social commerce with networking and more. By
pulling together Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and other social
networking sites, commerce-oriented sites can better interact not only
with their clients, but also with their users' networks that, until
only very recently, were all flung separately around the Web.
Some shopping portals like kaboodle are working towards the same idea by combining shopping with social networking online.
The
web is ever-changing and only the brave and forward-thinking amongst us
are ready to seize the next Big One. More often than not, those brave
souls have been in the porn industry. Although that may not change, now
that social networking has finally gotten bigger than porn, perhaps
things will change. What's your innovation?
