Mainstream Thinks Dot XXX is a Bust

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Dot XXXAn op-ed piece was written on Mashable about the new dot XXX domain. It was a criticism piece about dot XXX being an irrelevant domain and that main stream people will only be buying it to prevent pornographers from using their trademark.

The author was ignoring the first non-adult trademark to purchase a .XXX with their own uses in mind..PETA. PETA was one of the first companies to buy a .XXX and they have every intention of using the site for their own marketing purposes. Since many people think that their ads are verging on pornographic anyway, it will be interesting to see what they do with their new domain.

The writer continued to criticize the adult industry and their history of domain names, saying that most of our traffic is based off of accidental web stumbles instead of specific searches, SEO and all the other traditional means of driving traffic to a site. He used the example of Whitehouse.com being an adult site and not a site for the White House. In that case, yes accidental traffic was the primary source. Of course the domain also gained a big reputation because it is not the White House and people liked the humor of it.  In this case the criticism  was more that someone was quick enough to buy that hot domain real estate and figure out a way to monetize it in a big way.

He also used Whitehouse.com as an example of a site not being what is appears to be.  According to this logic, your business URL and name needs to be reflective of exactly what you do. So if you make wool scarves, you better call your business Wool Scarves Inc and have the domain be woolscarves.com. Because branding like “Warm Sheep” is misleading. I think the marketing world on a whole would have a huge issue with this logic.

Is he right that most mainstream businesses will buy a .XXX domain to prevent someone else from using it? Yes. Of course that is why they also bought .net, .me, .com, .co, .info, .cc ….you get my point.  If your business is trademarked and branded you want to make sure that you are capturing every possible source of traffic. You don’t want someone else benefiting from your brands hard work. Is .XXX any different? No.

So will there be some mainstream .XXX that is actually used? Yes. Will some be parked? Yes. Does it mean that .XXX is a failure? ….no.

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Is Google F&%king SEO?

Google Privacy Affects SEO

Google maybe watching you but they aren't sharing the information!

Google has just announced a big change to their site. Though from the user point of view it is minor. From the SEO point of view, it is a game changer.

Most of SEO strategy is based on keyword searches. How did someone get to your site? What search terms did they use to find you? The answers to these simple questions give a plethora of information to websites. They give you the specifics on how people find your site out of the millions that are out there. This information can then be programed into your site so that way you come up closer to the top of the search, to hopefully capture more of the traffic using those search terms. Google is now making that information private.

Google announced on Oct 18th that if you are signed into to Google when you conduct a search that your search will be encrypted. Any of the information that would normally be shared with websites will now be kept private, such as:

  • Referrer data- this is the information about what links the users clicked to get to your site. This is how you see who visited your site and where they came from.
  • Keywords- exact keywords and search terms will not be reported.

This will have a big impact on SEO for websites. Information that was freely reported and integral for comprehensive SEO will now be withheld. Google says you can still use their webmasters tool box to find popular and general search terms, but that will hardly help you create a accurate SEO strategy. Of course if you are paying Google for an ad or a sponsored link, you will still get referrer and keyword data, though only on your paid links.

The good thing about this is that currently only 10% of users are signed in. So 90% of the searches will still be reporting data.

 

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Dot XXX is Here!

“Lets be adult about it”, the slogan behind dot XXX, is going to be a phrase coming into more peoples awareness. The long awaited dot XXX is here. The ICM registry has opened up the sunrise period for trademark owners. So if you have a trademark on your dot com or your company name, you can buy your dot XXX now. If you don’t qualify for the the sunrise period you can sill reserve your domain before the formal registration opens up. Of course their will be an early registration fee.

The sunrise period is will run for 52 days, until October 28th.  There will be two phases. Sunrise A is for adult entertainment and Sunrise B is for those outside the industry.

After the sunrise period, there will be an 18 day landrush and then general registration will open up on December 2nd.

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Twitter Naked Image Gallery

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Twitter recently added that ability to load up images directly onto their mainframe. They have upped the ante again. Twitter has created photo galleries!

The photo galleries are your most recent photos that you have uploaded onto Twitter. But unlike Facebook where their photo strip is the most recent 5 photos, for Twitter it will be the most recent 100 images uploaded onto Twitter. It will be aggregating photos as far back as January of 2010 to compile your individual image gallery.

Twitter will be using photos uploaded from third party apps like Twitgoo and Moby.

This poses an interesting issue for their terms of service. A lot of people us third party apps to post their #TittyTuesday pics or just random nude pics. Of course this is a feature we love about Twitter, and who doesn’t look forward to #TittyTuesday, but currently the image galleries are displaying nude photos.  Obviously Twitter has either not figured this out, or not figured out what to do about it.

Because the images are being loaded on a third party app, it is up to the third party to monitor. It is possible that Twitter will insist that their third party apps be more stringent in their photo monitoring.

From a marketing perspective this is giving a great leg up for adult stars and websites. You can now pepper your profile with images from your website, or of you! It is a great way to do a little extra promotion in your tweets. So make sure that you images are good, in focus and highres!

You can view the most recent four images on your profile. But if you click an image it will take you to the complete gallery where you can see all the photos. If you click an image you can even see the tweet that posted the image.

This could possibly boost image retweets and give people much more interesting content to browse on Twitter.

In the mean time, enjoy your naked photo gallery!

Twitter Nude Photo Gallery

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Dot XXX at Ynot

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The Dot XXX panel at the Ynot Summit was definitely the highlight of the show.  The panel featured Eric Bernstein from Embalaw, the Free Speech Coalition, Vaughn Liley from ICM Registry (aka Dot XXX), and Conner Young from Ynot. The talk quickly got tense, especially between Vaughn and Tom from Free Speech.  Despite some tension a lot of information was put out, and misinformation was clarified. For instance, Vaughn said that India has not banned Dot XXX. Also to help combat some of the potential SEO challenges, Dot XXX will be launching their own search engine. Of course this does not solve the Google or Bing SEO issue, but it could create some interesting adult search and marketing options.

A new development is that you can now unblock a domain that you previously blocked. This had been a big concern for people. They were worried that if they blocked a domain it would be permanently inaccessible. The parking fee got everyone stirred up. Yes you can park your domain, but you will pay to do it. Meaning if you are getting Dot XXX simply because you don’t want someone else to use it you will have to pay a few hundred dollars more per year to not use it and keep it parked. Though dot XXX said why would you want to park a domain that is getting traffic. A good point if you are an adult site. But if you are not an adult site and you don’t want anyone attaching .xxx to your domain name, you are going to pay a hefty fee.

Here is a video of the panel if you would like to watch it in its entirety.

 

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Twitter gets Fancy

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Fancy Twitter BirdTwitter has just announced a new feature. You now have the ability to see your friends timeline. Essentially what this does is let you see what you friends see when they login to their Twitter. The argument for this is that if you are following an influencer you might be interested in the type of tweets they are interested in, in order to expand your network or learn from their Twitter style. The reality is that most of the people who are considered influencers follow a lot of people, so it is unlikely that use their primary timeline for monitoring their feed. They likely use lists to follow the people they are truly interested in.

List are something you have always been able to view, unless the person has set the list as private. So in essence, you have always been able to see the feeds of the people your influencers timeline, or at least the one they pay attention to.

I use a listing strategy for growing networks and for managing my tweets. I categorize the people I follow into groups that are relevant to my usage of Twitter. For instance, I have an “Adult” list that features people who are in the adult industry but not porn-stars. For the porn-stars I have an “Adult Stars” list. So if you were interested to see what timelines I watch, I would recommend looking at my lists or the lists of the other influencers you pay attention to.

Feature Friday Photo: Adult Trading Card Misti Dawn

Feature Friday Photo: The incredibly sexy Adult Trading Card of Misti Dawn.

The new “friends timeline” feature is being rolled out slowly across Twitter. Most people do not have it yet and as more people get it I am sure we will start seeing some feedback. Though likely it will not drastically change the way people are using Twitter.

This is the third big announcement from Twitter in the past week.

Earlier this week they announced the acquisition of Tweetdeck, a third party app that is used for managing your Twitter account. Tweetdeck is a favorite among marketers, promoters and companies that need to monitor multiple twitter streams. It is great for monitoring engagement and lists. In fact, I use it!

Twitter also changed their email notifications to be more robust. Now when someone mentions you or gives you a retweet, Twitter will send you a notification to let you know. This is great to be able to keep up with your Twitter via email. Though, if you are like me and don’t like your email box being filled with email notifications, I would suggest turning off the option in your Twitter settings.

These were not the only updates, I am seeing little ones poking their heads out slowly to reveal themselves, like some changes in the search function, and listing people now opens up a new window instead of a drop down menu.

So it was a big week in the Twitterverse, but for many of us these changes are not really affecting the way that we will continue our engagement. But it did answer the question about why so many people were having issues with their Twitter, like their profiles not showing any tweets or showing no followers…it was all the updates.

Now they are done and hopefully things will return to business as usual.

The Adult Trading Card for Misti Dawn is this weeks Friday Feature Photo. Misti is a super sexy tattooed red head. She has a great twitter feed that is very interactive. She is funny and easy to talk to. Her website has an amazing retro gaming theme which made me fall in love with her immediately. Her ATC Card really captures how sexy and vuluptous she is but also shows a wonderfully vulnerable and alluring side to her personality.

Misti great, follow her on Twitter @meowmistidawn, visit her website at MeowMistiDawn.com

Make sure you follow Adult Trading Card on Twitter @ATCCard and visit their website at AdultTradingCardCompany.com

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SEO vs. Social Media: The Traffic Throw Down

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Click-throughs and stickiness are two paramount issues for web businesses. Click-throughs are the number of people who click on a link, and stickiness is the amount of time someone stays on your site.  There is always contradictory information about the issues of sticky click-throughs and social media.  Some people say that social media is not as good as traditional SEO.  Some people say that it is better.  I am here to tell you that they are both right.

Xbiz just posted a story reporting that social media generates less traffic than search. When you dig deeper, the breakdown is not as simple as that. There was a huge variance according to industry.  For instance, the study showed that 42% of new visitors to news sites came from social media, but for sports sites it was only 5%. Overall search traffic still dominated the majority of unique visitor traffic, however social media unique visitor traffic, while only 11%, was on the rise.

What Xbiz did not highlight was that the study was not specifically related to Adult, and it does not have any figures that highlight the trends in Adult Industry. It was a look at all web traffic to all kinds of sites.

The study was conducted by Outbrain, a company which provides widgets to publishers, designed to keep readers on their sites longer. What the study also published was the chart of the top traffic sources for websites:

Top 20 Traffic Sources from Outbrain

Notice that Facebook is in the top 5 and Twitter is in the top 10.

What they also did not tell you is there is no mention at all of the Adult Industry. In fact, when you look at the findings it actually looks unlikely that they considered Adult entertainment at all.

Does this make the study irrelevant to Adult? No. It is still relevant to some extent – what it does tell you is that SEO is still an important aspect for creating a strong web presence.  In fact, SEO is relevant for social media as well.  Social media is about relationships; SEO is about clicks.

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The Pink is Cloudsurfing

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PV Locker LogoIn February, Pink Visual announced PV Locker, their cloud computing solution for storing porn. Though cloud storage is nothing new, cloud storage for adult content is.  Essentially, the locker is a place you can keep your porn so you don’t have to save it on your hard drive. The cloud storage also allows you to access your content from any place, and any device,  that can get internet access. Have a tablet, like an iPad? No problem.  Smart Phone? Easy peasy!

With the launch of the new PV Locker, Pink Visual did not just keep their PR releases to the standard blog, news sites and Twitter.  They began crowdsurfing.

From the beginning, the talk of the PV Locker was not just a “Here it is!” Pink Visual announced the site and then asked for feedback.  They tweeted out to their followers, asking them to look at the site and let them know what needed improvement. But it did not stop there.  Not only did they ask for feedback, they followed up. When I tweeted them about loving the site, they quickly contacted me to ask for my thoughts on improvement.

Pink Visual Tweet

This is a great use of social media for launching a site. Soliciting this kind of feedback makes me want to dig around in their site, to see if I can come up with something that might be helpful.  In the process I become more familiar with the site, and am more likely to start using it.

In the process of crowdsurfing, they have received some feedback that will help design and navigation, from increasing the size of thumbnails, to 404’s on links. They also addressed the issue of 500 mbs of storage, and said that they will be increasing that soon.

A bit about the site

When you go to the site you immediately see featured video and a series of clips. Click on price and an internal pop-up window opens up that lets you easily create an account and purchase the video. Once you buy it, it is automatically saved in your locker.  Then when you want to access your content, you login to your account and can watch to your heart’s content.

The site is easily navigable by niche, porn stars and most popular. The design is very clean and has some fun logos (like the little PV locker) integrated nicely into the pictures.

What is so significant about the PV Locker is that this represents the new direction for porn. Businesses are accessing cloud computing for file storage in increasing numbers. More people are starting to see the benefits. And as our world continues to blend mobile computing into our daily lives, cloud computing will become an integral part of that transition.  Yet again, porn is leading the technology curve. Pink Visual is on the forefront of adaptive technology.

Though now you can only store videos from Pink Visual, the site will not keep its content storage proprietary. They have plans to open up their cloud storage to other companies.

When Pink Visual says that they are designing a site for their users, they really mean it. Crowdsurfing is a great tactic to find out people’s opinions as well as potential issues that may have been overlooked. It is a great strategy to get their fans more invested in their launch, and convert them to users as well as supporters.

 

 

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Adult Classifieds get a new venue!

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Friday Feature Photo: Kyle King

Friday Feature Photo: The sexy Hot House Exclusive star, Kyle King

The adult ad section on Craigslist caused a big scandal in the United States. Craigslist received a lot of flack for their adult ads.  The “Craigslist Killer” was reported to have trolled the personal ads to find his next victim.  Despite intense scrutiny and a very public lambasting, Craigslist was not particularly interested in removing this section. In fact, the law sided with Craigslist. According to first amendment lawyer Doug Mirell, “The Communications Decency Act says that essentially those who are simply providing a bulletin board by which others can post their content is not going to be liable for the content itself.” When people cried out about moral responsibility, or about the site being used to facilitate human trafficking, the site reminded people that Craigslist had actively helped authorities track down people engaging in human trafficking. In the end, their adult/erotic section was removed.

Many people asked, “Where are adult ads going to go, now that they are gone from Craigslist?”  Duttslist has answered that question.  It is a site that is set up like Craigslist, following the same style of user interface. They have made no secret of their adult ad section, in fact they feature it; in their “Hottest Ads” section, you will see the most popular of their adult ads.  They also offer more traditional community ads, making the classifieds site robust like Craigslist. but they are catering to the adult industry.

Duttslist is a two-person operation. Mike is the owner and Jen is the media consultant. Their most popular city is Toronto, but they are quickly spreading into major US cities.  Active on Twitter, various message boards and escort review boards, Duttslist is actively promoting their site as the new source for adult classifieds.

Their promotions are working because they are averaging over 200,000 page views a day, with more than 15,000 unique daily visitors, and it just keeps growing. They offer three different levels of ads, from the free classifieds to sponsored ads.  Though they are not competing with Craigslist, since Craigslist no longer offers an erotic services section, they are raising some eyebrows over there, because they did receive a cease and desist from them.

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that the adult industry was looking for a good adult classified site and Duttslist answered their call.  Make sure you check out their site and visit them on Twitter

Friday Feature Photo: Kyle KingThe amazingly sexy Kyle King is this weeks Friday Feature Photo. I met him at the Phoenix Forum this past weekend, and was immediately captivated. Obviously he is incredibly good looking with a body I could eat sushi off. But he is also a really nice guy.  I had a number of wonderful conversations with him.  Kyle is a Hot House exclusive, and has starred in a number of great Hot House movies. He also has a blog where he shares his thoughts and pictures from his travels, talks about his life and presents some exclusive sexy pics.

Make sure you check out Kyle’s Blog

Find him on Hot House

And chat with him on Twitter @KyleKingxxx

 

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