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The UX of Porn Tube Sites Are Designed for the Ultimate Money Shot
- OrderlyTiamat 4y agoThe top/title banner on this site displayed > 30% of my mobile screen. I'm just noting this before reading, as the topic is website UX ... (e: it's much better when in portrait mode, I just happened to be browsing landscape)
- latchkey 4y agoI built the IT infrastructure for one of the largest hardcore porn sites out there. When we did a complete rebuild of it (because it was in horrible PHP code), we tried to do a redesign and the CEO of the company made us change it back. Why? Because it was too nice and the UX was too good. He told us that his customers actually appreciated a more 'dirty' and 'raw' feel to the site. It is porn after all! So, we went back to the drawing board and did just that... many of the changes we made to the UX were reverted to intentionally make things a bit harder to use and make the site feel more 'dirty'... which is funny given the content was already super dirty.
- jimbob45 4y agoOddly enough, I somewhat agree with your CEO. In the hypothetical scenario where I would ever visit a porn site, I wouldn't ever want to feel like I'm being funneled anywhere. I would already not trust the site and feeling funneled would make me wary of falling into a scam/exploit/trap, even though most sites would most likely only ever want ad money and would never care to scam/exploit/trap me.
- frozencell 4y ago> his customers actually appreciated a more 'dirty' and 'raw' feel to the site. It is porn after all! Sounds like HN.
- manv1 4y agoSearch for the definitive article about porn and technology: porn, the slow-slung engine of progress Gutenberg might have printed the bible, but he made is money off of porn.
- mtnGoat 4y agoI think the author is being too generous. The layouts were designed over a decade ago and most tubes sites just copied YouTube for a layout, assuming They know what they were doing when they designed it. Or copied other existing tube sites’ layouts. A lot of these sites started by using an out of the box software that has a prebuilt back then as well. The designs weren’t changed because why would you change a horse that’s winning you many millions per month? Plus everyone was afraid of changing anything that might hurt their seo ranking. Source: worked in that industry for over a decade and know/knew many of the decision makers at these companies. They weren’t that strategic, I assure you.
- ssszzz 4y ago[dead]
- warinukraine 4y ago
- ssszzz 4y ago[dead]
- erdos4d 4y agoToo many icons covering the girls, can hardly see them. On mobile though, maybe this works on a larger screen.
- mccorrinall 4y agoHow is the pornhub interface different from youtube‘s?
- desindol 4y agoYouTube copied a lot of features from pornhub like the heatmap of the most watched parts of a video.
- thaufeki 4y agoAlso, these sites had a play on hovering over a video thumbnail feature that youtube copied
- hackernewds 4y agoTo be fair these seem like naturally intuitive and simple ideas
- hammock 4y agoIt's actually patented by a porn site and YouTube pays them for the licensed use of it
- groffee 4y agoSource? I don't see any possible way a thumbnail playing on hover is patentable.
- hammock 4y agoCan’t find a source for my actual claim but here is a similar patent that Google claimed themselves: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9363579B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US9363579B2/en
- mrguyorama 4y agoIt was so natural and intuitive that Youtube's version STILL doesn't compare to how good, fast, seemless, and unintrusive it is done on the porn sites, years later.
- seydor 4y ago
- mmcclure 4y agoI upvoted it because I read the article and found it to be quite interesting. As other commenters have mentioned, you might find YouTube indistinguishable because of how many features have been inspired by porn sites (or, at the very least, were popularized on those adult content sites first).
- hackernewds 4y agoCallous comparison. Take a step back and imagine what success, and reflection of good rankings algos would be on these sites. Longer engagement times and multiple videos (+ads) for YouTube. Shorter time on site and less videos for Pornhub. The interfaces would be designed accordingly with those end goals in mind.
- thaufeki 4y agoWhy would they want less time spent on the site? That's optimal perhaps for the user not site, and the article discusses how the site is designed to keep the user searching.
- jsgo 4y agoHow long does one need to watch porn in a single sitting? Netflix,YouTube, TikTok, etc. benefit from the fact we can sit there all day watching it (and some people do). Porn? Well...
- jstarfish 4y agoProliferation of amphetamines has brought "gooning" to the mainstream, where people get amped on meth/Adderall and do exactly that.
- collegeburner 4y agoContent ideally suited to a user may cause him to "finish his business" sooner and leave the site rather than continuing to click and browse.
- PointlessLogin 4y ago> him That's a sweeping assumption you have made there my friend :-)
- collegeburner 4y ago
- stavros 4y agoI have the same issue with this as other commenters here: The article says that porn sites are designed to maximize engagement. As opposed to what, other video sites?
- blowski 4y agoI imagine it's a different type of "engagement" for a lot of viewers, something the article only alludes to euphemistically.
- stavros 4y agoIt doesn't matter how you measure engagement though, in the end all ad-supported sites want to maximize it.
- blowski 4y agoTrue. It would be interesting to read specific comparisons to YouTube. The problem for an article like this is discussing details of something that's extremely intimate for most people.
- bmacho 4y agoWhy would they? Imagine you are an organization to create something, and you ... do that, while having ads, (with additional other supports). E.g. I don't think phoronix.com is optimized for engagement. Why can't Michael (phoronix guy) do the articles because it is his job, and not because he want to maximize the ads?
- stavros 4y agoBecause ads are what's paying him to do his job.
- failedengineer 4y agoand because it's almost trivial to run a subscriber supported site out of business 3 steps: 1 - fund high quality, totally free content, great UI, minimal ads 2 - poach customers from subscriber sites, wait them out. will take about a year. they'll go broke. 3 - start to optimize for "engagement" (ad views). profit.
- Chris2048 4y agoInteresting how, in attempt to make the article on this topic more SFW, they decided to replace thumbs of actual porn with hand-painted representations..
- hoseja 4y agoIt's Art!
- seydor 4y agoOr maybe a photoshop filter
- prmoustache 4y agoThey put the quotes incorrectly. Normally all the titles should be about incest or pedophilia like on the real websites.
- denton-scratch 4y agoIt's not surprising that all the porn websites the author mentions have a similar design; they're all owned and run by the same company, Mindgeek.
- hoseja 4y agoNot? Some belong to a French guy in Czechia IIRC.
- tokinonagare 4y agoYes, like xvideos.com, for those who want a URL. Their video buffering tech is pretty amazing.
- dmonitor 4y agoI haven't seen any porn site with tagging, search, or browse features as well made as e621 (or any booru website)
- Der_Einzige 4y agoThat fucking website man. I literally googled the MSG "e number" one time, which is "e621" and in that moment my innocence was ruined. Is it also surprising that the "booru" websites, which are likely frequented by the most ASD of the ASD inflicted men, would be well cataloged? It is simply what our brains do.
- Akronymus 4y agoIMO the only booru like site that has a better tagging/searching system than esix is derpibooru. It is fast enough to be almost scary. Even with highly complex filters.
- giancarlostoro 4y agoI was curious because I am a back-end tech nerd, and apparently "derpibooru" (I had no idea what to expect) is running on Elixir (I assume Phoenix) specifically this: https://github.com/philomena-dev/philomena https://github.com/philomena-dev/philomena Edit: PLEASE BE AWARE OF THE LICENSE, it is AGPL licensed, which means if you copy any of the code into your back-end, your whole back-end must be open sourced, as a back-end nerd I stay away from anything AGPL'd just to be on the safe side of the law.
- s1mon 4y agoThe byline says July 2022, but the errata says “This article was updated with corrections on August 13, 2019”… hmmm Also possibly NSFW (illustrations of the porn sites).
- jjulius 4y agoFrom the very beginning of the article: >This story is part of our Weekend Reads series, where we highlight a story we love from the archives. It was originally published in the fifth issue of Eye on Design magazine and again online on August 8, 2019.
- godmode2019 4y agoI had a friend once tell me that porn was the driving force for innovation on the internet. Firstly getting the speeds up to load images, then videos with buffering then 4k, then VR. The design features and business model of porn sites is years ahead of anything else, for a reason these sites up until very recently were the majority of bandwith over the Internet. A business model you will start to see more which is very common in porn is to use the streaming site as advertising to your paid membership site. You release 10min clip of say a podcast and to watch the rest you need to join the members only site. As YouTube partner programme gets worse and rules about what content get more strict you will see a drive to only using YouTube as a marketing tool to get people behind the pay wall.
- Zaskoda 4y agoGaming is why the pipes are fast. Porn is why the pipes are fat.
- yamtaddle 4y ago> You release 10min clip of say a podcast and to watch the rest you need to join the members only site. That's exactly what John Oliver's show does, and has for years, right? They have a couple major segments and two or three smaller bits in an episode, and one of the two major segments gets released in its entirety for free (and inevitably linked by someone or another in every half-way relevant discussion thread anywhere on the Web). They post them on YouTube, I think, I suppose since HBO Max doesn't have a free streaming site and it wouldn't get 1/10 the eyeballs of YouTube even if they did, and the point is advertising, after all.
- rngname22 4y agoIt's absolutely driving innovation in the VR and stereographic 180 degree film markets. 2k -> 4k -> 6k -> 8k side-by-side video over the course of a 4-5 years.
- giancarlostoro 4y agoWasn't porn the first ecommerce offering? Like they were the pioneers of "give me your credit card we give you porn." or is that an urban legend, I swear I've heard this remarked here on HN before, I just don't have any solid citations.
- pinkwinds 4y agoWhy is infinite scrolling not more popular with these sites?
- squeaky-clean 4y agoRefreshing the page means new ads and there's another opportunity to put a floating banner ad and popup-overlay ad in front of you.
- vanjajaja1 4y agoI also wonder why TikTok style infinite scroll auto play isn't an option
- mrguyorama 4y agoredgifs dot com They're optimized for short form, continuously scrolling, mini videos. They don't do the recommendation algorithm though, at least not for free users.
- kranke155 4y agoLol porn is addictive enough!
- thomastjeffery 4y agoBecause it actually sucks. Pages and tabs are much more useful.
- yamtaddle 4y agoI expect a "sow, then reap" (LOL) pattern is super-common on these sites: browse one or a few searches or categories, new-tab anything interesting and move on, then close those and look through what you opened when you think you've got enough queued up. Not just scrolling down a single "feed".
- seydor 4y agoimagine reloading the page during a cliffhanger and losing the video you were watching
- thomastjeffery 4y agoThe worst thing about data driven UX - especially with porn - is that it's often a self fulfilling prophecy. Trends that are likely side-effects are considered to be primary factors driving engagement. With porn, it's usually a fetish that is only moderately popular, but broadly unoffensive. Because the average person who isn't specifically interested in the fetish isn't turned off by it either, that fetish gets more positive engagement relative to other fetishes; which drives studios to make more of it, and tube sites to advertise it more. This pattern likely started with foot fetish, but really took off over the last few years with "step sibling" porn. No one I've talked to is actually interested in the step-sibling fetish, yet the overwhelming majority of content being made and advertised - especially by mainstream studios and well-known actors - is step-sibling themed. Why? Because these studios are deciding what to make based on what's popular on pornhub, and what's popular on pornhub is literally anything these studios make. I sincerely doubt that they would see a drop in engagement if they diversified, but trends in data will never drive diversity faster than they drive convergence, because convergence is essentially the goal of data driven production in the first place. It's also worth noting that the near-monopoly status of Mindgeek in the casual porn streaming industry has amplified this pattern. Their recent decision to stop hosting unverified content - good or bad - has had a pretty serious side-effect on the singular greatest driving factor of internet porn: piracy. If a porn studio or independent actor doesn't want their content floating around pornhub, they can simply refuse to post it. Anyone who wants to upload a copy without their consent will fail verification. So now, the only content being shared on pornhub is what creators hope will be interesting, and never what consumers want to share. Most new competitive content creators are more concerned about getting paid than getting advertised because they don't have the financial buffer that established studios have; so they are less likely to put their content on pornhub, and less likely to by found by the casual consumer.
- sbf501 4y ago> but really took off over the last few years with "step sibling" porn. Even one of the Mortys in R&M made a wish that "inc*st porn have more a mainstream appeal." My partner both winced at that and said to each other, "Did he just say what I think he said?" So maybe I'm just too old and traditional (despite being queer)?
- globular-toast 4y agoNSFW or recovering porn addicts. Wish I hadn't clicked.