6 ms·

I 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 buff

by godmode2019 4y ago

I 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 ago
Gaming 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 ago
It'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 ago
Wasn'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.
- astrange 4y ago
  And the lack of crypto payments for porn should be a strong sign that it’s useless.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    This is a wrong correlation fallacy. Porn sites, while very cutting edge in a lot of ways (which generates more revenue for them), are extremely slow to adopt changes to their source of revenue because they are very protective about that aspect (for obvious reasons). Not only that, but the sources of revenue are all deeply intertwined with their affiliate networks, which drive the traffic to the sites in the first place. Shaving is a huge concern, so these sites have to use 'approved' software that everyone else uses for this. One of the largest used pieces of software is called NATS [1] and it is a trainwreck of complexity. Everything is directed through their integrated billing options [2]... which as you can see is extensive. Why? Because credit card companies will routinely shut down your merchant account randomly... because p0rn. For the company I worked for (early 2000's), we developed a micro currency that was HUGELY successful and was used for all sorts of interesting things, like pay per minute billing. This was all early/pre days of blockchain adoption and had we used a low cost blockchain of some of this, it might have allowed for earlier more interesting experiments. Anyway, the full answer is that this is a lot more complex than it appears on the surface and you have no idea what you're talking about here with a comment like that. [1] https://toomuchmedia.com/pp_nats.htm https://toomuchmedia.com/pp_nats.htm [2] https://toomuchmedia.com/pp_nats-billers.htm https://toomuchmedia.com/pp_nats-billers.htm
    - astrange 4y ago
      I was thinking of the "indie" side, namely people using sites like onlyfans who constantly get banned from PayPal and such and so don't have access to money transfers.
    - tshanmu 4y ago
      There was the ft podcast about porn in which the creator of nats https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Thylmann https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Thylmann played an important part in the consolidation leading to mind geek.
latchkey 4y ago
Speaking as someone who built the IT infrastructure for one of the largest sites on the net, this is absolutely true. We were the first to do live 1080p streaming. At the time, even finding a hardware mixer for this content was difficult. It was so early that there was only one product available that wasn't just prime time equipment.
ytyl 4y ago
and IoT...thinkaboutit

Zaskoda 4y ago

Gaming 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 ago

It'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 ago

Wasn'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.

astrange 4y ago
And the lack of crypto payments for porn should be a strong sign that it’s useless.
- latchkey 4y ago
  This is a wrong correlation fallacy. Porn sites, while very cutting edge in a lot of ways (which generates more revenue for them), are extremely slow to adopt changes to their source of revenue because they are very protective about that aspect (for obvious reasons). Not only that, but the sources of revenue are all deeply intertwined with their affiliate networks, which drive the traffic to the sites in the first place. Shaving is a huge concern, so these sites have to use 'approved' software that everyone else uses for this. One of the largest used pieces of software is called NATS [1] and it is a trainwreck of complexity. Everything is directed through their integrated billing options [2]... which as you can see is extensive. Why? Because credit card companies will routinely shut down your merchant account randomly... because p0rn. For the company I worked for (early 2000's), we developed a micro currency that was HUGELY successful and was used for all sorts of interesting things, like pay per minute billing. This was all early/pre days of blockchain adoption and had we used a low cost blockchain of some of this, it might have allowed for earlier more interesting experiments. Anyway, the full answer is that this is a lot more complex than it appears on the surface and you have no idea what you're talking about here with a comment like that. [1] https://toomuchmedia.com/pp_nats.htm https://toomuchmedia.com/pp_nats.htm [2] https://toomuchmedia.com/pp_nats-billers.htm https://toomuchmedia.com/pp_nats-billers.htm
  - astrange 4y ago
    I was thinking of the "indie" side, namely people using sites like onlyfans who constantly get banned from PayPal and such and so don't have access to money transfers.
  - tshanmu 4y ago
    There was the ft podcast about porn in which the creator of nats https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Thylmann https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Thylmann played an important part in the consolidation leading to mind geek.

latchkey 4y ago

Speaking as someone who built the IT infrastructure for one of the largest sites on the net, this is absolutely true. We were the first to do live 1080p streaming. At the time, even finding a hardware mixer for this content was difficult. It was so early that there was only one product available that wasn't just prime time equipment.

ytyl 4y ago

and IoT...thinkaboutit