If you’ve ever seen geographically sensitive advertising telling you “Sexy women in your area want to meet now!” and wondered if dating sites have the balls/lack of conviction/stupidity to just paste in pictures of models and pretend they’re customers this ad, served to me recently, is proof they do.

Sydney Moon, San Francisco’s finest, is not only not looking for dates, but is the kind of woman who’d pull off your head and shit into your neck if you were to question the validity of her degree (don’t ask me how I know).

I’m not anywhere near Horsham either.

Getting Kyla Cole to do your bidding is now possible without knowledge of her whereabouts and bondian reserves of charm , her avatar’s the star of “GODS: Lands of Infinity, Special Edition”. As games which sound like bands you’d never listen to it seems pretty standard. Monsters, swords, wizards etc. A reviewer describes it thus:

“GODS: Lands of Infinity follows the story of a hot chick that was once a god, but now has lost her powers and must start over from the beginning.”

Hot chicks have always had a god-like ability to bend me to their will. I don’t know why she needs any other powers. It must be harder to be hot from within a suit of armor.

Kyla Cole

I stand corrected. It’s hard to be hot in armor unless you leave the trousers at home and set the ensemble off with heels.

Kyla talks about the game here. Don’t watch it unless you’ve got time to Google Zuzana Tutterova. My god what is it with Slovak women…?

The full game’s available for download and there’s a free demo online too.

Link

Eva Padburg sells a car.

Mercedes have employed Eva Padberg in an attempt to add sex-appeal to their cars. Based on a quick analysis of her work in Playboy I’m thinking mission accomplished.

Eva Padberg thinking about seatbelt pre-tensioners.

Eva Padberg can’t find her keys.

Google Eva until you understand why Mercedes have made the right decision.

Mystique-Magazine.com

Mystique Magazine is a high-budget website devoted to softcore poses of well known models in exotic locales. Their model of the year, decided by online vote, wins a shoot in a glamorous location which, as it’s basically a paid holiday, makes them very popular with talent. In efforts to win the prize many models send Mystique as much traffic as they can.

In the past they’ve been operated in the Playboy mold, apparent in their determination to label what’s basically a web operation as a magazine, but as Playboy fades in profitability they’ve decided to change their approach. While Mystique, like Playboy, used to lock its content away and try to bully browsers into buying, the most successful new adult sites give away a lot of content and hope to persuaded people to join after getting a chance to experience what’s on offer – Kisses and Candlesticks. It works and recognizing this Mystique have ‘borrowed’ a lot of ideas and re-launched with an emphasis on making free content easy to find.

The best thing about their new site is, unsurprisingly, their sole prominent innovation. For their most popular models they’ve posted audio clips, which provide a rare chance to hear what models like… for instance… Kyla Cole – actually sound like.

Kyla Cole audio clips (mid left of page)

Most of their ‘Top Rated Models‘ (just below mid right of page) have audio. As usually these women are only heard pretending to orgasm or reading a script there’s something exciting about just listening to them talk. You feel as if you’re getting to know them in the way you do eavesdropping on strangers at a restaurant. I’m sure there are more but Katia Corriveau, Linda O’Neil, Aria Giovanni, Jennifer Korbin, Divini Rae, Zdenka Podkapova, Rebecca DiPietro, Amiee Rickards and Erica Campbell can all be heard right now and I think they’d be smart to post longer, more podcastable, audio.

Unfortunately in their rush to ape the competition Mystique have started a megapixel race with their competitors. For years Peter “Mr. Luba” Hegre has been advertising images at up to 6000px and Mystique are now posting shots at 3000px (a quarter of Hegre’s size).

The problem is, while Hegre shoots with Medium Format digital back which takes ultra-high resolution 39 megapixel stills, Mystique appear to have simply blown their old content up. E.g. here’s a 100% crop of “Ira Shakira” from Hegre. You can see it’s in focus and shows a wealth of real detail:

100% crop of Ira Sahkira at 3000 pixels courtesy Hegre Art

As opposed to this from Mystique which is clearly an enlargement/expansion of a smaller file.

100% crop of Kyla Cole at 3000 pixels courtesy Mystique.

There’s no real detail and claiming this is a ‘high resolution’ image is a lie (you can also see the difference in color correction. Kyla’s image is ten shades of brown). If Mystique do have real high-resolution images on the site it’s madness to mix them with enlargements like this which will only upset users and undermine their credibility.

If Mystique give me access to the site I’ll come back with a fuller review and any necessary corrections. For now I’d say enjoy their new library of free material, check out the audio clips and don’t believe the hype. Their content is sadly still no richer than the rapidly aging 800-1000px industry standard.

Porn.com has just sold for $9 million, $5 million less than Sex.com took during a similar sale in January 2006.

That’s a bargain as porn.com is the better domain.

While sex.com gets more type-in traffic than porn.com, ’sex’ is a keyword used for all manner of searches whereas people searching for ‘porn’ are highly likely to be in the right target audience for adult websites. Unless there’s a better way to monetize an adult domain that pornography, the domains which draw the best qualified porn traffic are those with the most value. Ergo, porn trumps sex.

Porn.com’s new owners have said they’re in no rush and are waiting to come up with a strong idea for the site. The idea they should be exploring is screamingly obvious, they need to build a content site. The alternative, using Porn.com to push traffic to other people’s sites, guarantees they’ll make less in the long term as even if they’re paid 50% of revenue, by choosing not to build a content library they’ll have no assets to exploit in future or other media.

Their real dilemma should be deciding what kind of pay-site to build and I’d hope they don’t make the mistake of producing just another me-too subscription destination. Announcing a desire to become an ‘adult portal’ (how quaint, portals are so 1999.) doesn’t seem very smart but hey, who said spending $9M had to make you cautious?

As traditional adult models make less and less thanks to competition and web-models (torrents, social networking) which didn’t exist in the late nineties, it’ll be interesting to see how such significant investments are turned to profit.

(N.B. Don’t you wish you’d been a little geekier in 1994 and bought some of those primo domains yourself?)

The most beautiful models – the really famous ones – are intimidatingly flawless genetic exceptions as atypical as Stephen Hawking and Michael Jordan but in far less inspiring ways. For the rest of us trolls there’s Photoshop and even in 2007 few people understand what an artist with the ability to do more than crop, paste and colorize can do if asked.

Normally changes tend towards the subtle but because it’s easiest to start as close to your intended result as possible. If you have the skill, the inclination and the armagnac (the secret of all great creative personalities) but not the models to match, you can remake people Steve Austin style as this video shows.

Hence the ’she looks like what?’ faces you see at porn conventions and the make-up artists who travel with most major celebrities. Depressing until you realise it vaults the person you’re diddling into the ranks of world-class poon.

I love Fleshbot and though I couldn’t do what they so (I’ve tried and it’s harder than it looks), but I can write copy. (When I’ve been paid to pay attention, which I haven’t regarding any error-ridden, run-on rubbish you might find here. My standards are so good I’ve got two of them.)

As an ex-copywriter I’m pretty attentive to the style of what I read, so it’s with some surprise I found myself only noticing Fleshbot’s horrendous tagline earlier today.

“Fleshbot is a frequently updated and influential web magazine about the pornography–and the sex culture–that digital technology and distribution has made possible.”

Jesus.

Where to begin? Assuming they like what their copy says, there are a grip of easy improvements.

Firstly who’s grandmother did the typing? Using double-dashes to simulate em dashes is a hack invented in the days of monospaced typewriters. It’s not been relevant to computers for twenty years and looks retarded. It’s one of the problems caused by the fondness American schools have for teaching typing (we don’t in Europe). The outmoded ludicrous people doing the teaching pass on their outmoded, and nowdays ludicrous, habits and pollute the world with people who think they’re still supposed to put two spaces after a period as if it were 1950. In a business letter the double dashes would only be annoying and weird, in a tagline they can’t be excused.

Onto grammar. Though it makes sense – barely – if read twice, on first reading ‘…an influential web magazine about the pornography…’ sounds like something Borat would say. Also, when was the last time anyone, or thing, influential had to label themselves so grandiosely? The influential President of the United States? The influential CEO of Microsoft? It’s embarrassing.

I could argue the term ‘web magazine’ is a bloated $20 way of saying blog, but could just as easily point out how many people still don’t know what a blog is. I’d win this argument with myself by explaining that Fleshbot readers are likely to know what blogs are given their age, web use and fondness for RSS, but I’m tired and not getting paid for this so fuck arguing with myself. I know I’m going to win regardless.

Finally, listing both digital technology and distribution reads like another attempt to sound impressive which isn’t required. Digital distribution technology is… er… technology and taglines should be tight. The point’s well made without mentioning distribution and no one’s going to be surprised by the website’s digital focus.

Our newly beaten into shape tagline reads:

“Fleshbot is a frequently updated web magazine about pornography and the sex culture digital technology has made possible.”

A clear improvement (Gawker dudes, you’re welcome).

Fleshbot’s just about the biggest sex-blog online. Let’s not have our champions embarrass us.

AVN reports that Google has officially prevented adult domains from using its Adsense for Domains program.

They define adult domains as:

“any domain whose name, content or advertising is lewd, graphic, or profane,”

Google have given adult webmasters until May 31st to remove such domains from the program.

Adsense for Domains has many fans in porn. Despite Google veiling the percentage of profits passed to sites promoting their advertisers, they provide better targeting, more honest reporting, and bigger checks than thousands of corrupt adult affiliate programs who seem to promise more.

The downside to Google’s efficiency has been their tacit promotion of domain speculation. Buying domains is cheap and placing ads on them costs nothing, allowing speculators to buy thousands of URI’s, fill them with ads and then sell the ones which don’t meet profit targets. It’s keeps good domains out of the hands of people trying to build sites and floods the web with advertising circle-jerks which encompass some of the most potent domains and sullies the reputation of digital pornographers. It’s a problem in the mainstream too.

Google’s decision won’t impact the speculators for long, but will likely result in similar bans at smaller ad networks and for ad types beyond those focused on domains. The days of porn sites being able to participate in mass-market advertising programs may be drawing to a close.

Ron Jeremy is a really nice guy but you don’t tend to associate his name with good taste. Good tastebuds maybe, the guy does to buffets what Halliburton does to no-bid contracts (Zing!), but he’s the last person you’d expect to find in the celebrity homes issue of Wallpaper.

When I found this T-Shirt (pictured) in a store today I was taken aback. It’s actually pretty nicely designed. I’d almost wear it. ‘The Hedgehog’ looks good as a South Park/minifig chimera. Who’da thunk it?

As I wasn’t about to drop £20 ($4,000,000) on a T-shirt simply so I could blog about it, I instead committed the manufacturer’s website to memory and walked home, to discover I’d lost it somewhere between the parts of my brain dedicated to ‘breasts’ and ‘ninjas’ – forcing me to spend the next hour Googling for a picture of the thing.

Did you know 50% of world manufacturing is dedicated to producing T-shirts carrying the image of Bill Clinton’s favorite Jew?

They’re. Fucking. Everywhere.

Crazy.

Ron for President.

You can’t accuse me of pretending to be be an expert in areas I don’t know. Hand to hand combat and the orgasmic techniques of the ancient Mayans, yes. Thumbnail Gallery Posts… not so much.

This wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t own TGP.com. It’s a serious URL and a possession which puts me in a position where each week I have to email someone and say no, $25,000 isn’t an offer I’m interested in, even though it should be when the URL isn’t making me that much a year and should be making more each week. Despite never becoming expert in the field of ‘giving shit away’ I’ve had enough experience on most sides of the adult business to feel confident I could make the site a success. The problem’s the model.

At TGP’s people upload links to free photos which are shared with visitors after a little filtering. The money comes from ads and for a TGP owner the more creatively they can be rammed down a surfers gaping maw the better. Lucre which has lead to the proliferation of pop-overs, pop-unders, flash-floaters and the other annoying IN YOUR FACE techniques the jizz-bizz is famous for. It’s a very dirty, and highly profitable, business.

I’ve always been reluctant to fall into this trap, determined to run TGP without resorting to scumbag webmaster techniques. There are good guys in every part of the adult business, I’ve met them. I’ve made it my mission to be that guy in TGP because like female baldness, it can work beautifully even if it’s a little unusual.

So I’ve tried to run a traditional TGP with no scummy ads (result – tons of crappy traffic and no real profit), as a blog with few TGP elements (result – high quality traffic and absolutely no profit) and most recently as a web 2.0 style TGP/Digg hybrid (result – total confusion and almost no profit).

It’s frustrating because the site as it exists today should be a blockbuster. Content is uploaded directly by users and voted on by anyone who comes to the site. The best stuff makes the homepage and the spam gets deleted. It’s Digg meets fapp(ing), a genius and much copied idea (I copied it too so that’s okay), and about as popular among webmasters as leaving a World of Warcraft all-nighter to take a Pilates classs.

As a marketing guru it’s my job to know why things work and more importantly, why they don’t. In this case I’m lost. Sure the TGP design might be crappy and the technology imperfect but have you seen this? It’s ugly as sin and makes seven figures a month. Ugly is not a problem (or this? It’s ugly as sin and makes seven figures a month.)

So I’d like to hear from people who know about this TGP niche and want in on TGP.com. I’m going back to school (start your mental training montage). I wanna be a contender. Sure I’m older than normal but I still got some stuff in the basement. I’ve got too much on my plate to start from scratch so we’re going to have to make a splash, rely on some blunt force trauma. I wanna build some hurtin’ bombs.

Teach me, take my money, tell me what to do. Make me your bitch. It’ll give me something to blog about, and give you a share in TGP.com (a version of which is making the silly money it should be, not the beer money it is). Hell I’ll even through in marketing/PR advice and handjobs if it’ll help (to clarify that’s handjobs for women – women with… er… cocks. Guys, you just get oral).

Otherwise I’m going to shave off my hair and check into reTGPhab (that was bad, but the comedy union said I had to or they’d kick me out). Talk to me.