[petenixey]

I predict tough times for these guys. I remember when Zivity launched as the last "Venture Capital funded porn startup". Shortly afterwards the team dissolved, they gave back back most of the funding because they agreed with the investors that it was never going to be big and the shoestring team that remained reinvented the site as (as far as I can see) a niche, subscription site.

I also think there are some warning bells in the Techcrunch article:

>"Internet porn sites are still shameful artifacts of a decade past — from when the Internet was a collection of websites featuring low-resolution images and oversized banner ads"

You should always be very careful when labelling a sophisticated and fast-moving industry as out-dated as the accusation can come straight back at you. The current sites could be better designed but frankly they are not bad and represent huge technical feats, streaming massive amounts of video to huge numbers of people. Since what they give out is free and they've been going for as long as YouTube I think it's fair to conclude that they're monetising that content effectively via advertising.

I'd be very surprised if this is an industry which can be won by design improvements. I think there are largely two types of company 1) the free sites who generate most of their cash from lead gen and advertising 2) the subscription sites who create content that's sufficiently high quality or niche that people will pay for it. The latter sites are the revenue stream for the former.

Paintbottle looks to me like it's going to catch itself in between these two models. I would guess it's going to struggle as a free site (since it doesn't have any ads) and will also struggle as a paid site because it's not sufficiently niche and its funding expectations may preclude the types of revenues it could viably make. The sooner it figures out which one it actually is the more likely it is to succeed.

[wisty]

> The current sites could be better designed

For who? They aren't designed to keep users happy (as the users generally are already ... happy). They are designed to make money, by getting banner clicks / affiliate payements / promotion payments / whatever.

[prawks]

Every service used by people can benefit from making their users happy to use it, and providing features that better enable the users' end goals. Regardless of how they generate revenue.

[coldtea]

>Every service used by people can benefit from making their users happy to use it, and providing features that better enable the users' end goals. Regardless of how they generate revenue.

The point the parent tries to make is it's not "regardless" if the two objectives (making users happy - generate revenue) clash.