the core cause of the shift in traffic really isnt the tube sites
 

its bandwidth prices dropping to a level that makes the cost of delivering video content worth the meager marginal revenue. i think the tubesites are the scapegoats here, but you can manage the content with 3rd party solutions.

you can buy a license for a ton of non-exclusive content and have a legal tube site running. and its hurting this biz because similar content was previously available at a higher cost than just going to a site.

The sales now goes to fake dating sites.. sooner or later that will have an end too

I disagree. The youtube model is my evidence.

Yeah, blame the new roads when people drive to fast.

Fuck ethics and moral, just shoot at anything that moves, and if it don't move - kick it a little

I'd blame the economy all over the world before blaming the tube sites but that doesn't make the tube sites any less annoying.

Bullshit, tubesites has much traffic..

Cheap bandwidth is good
Piracy is bad

the economy and content saturation seem to be the culprits here

cost of stamps goes down = more junkmail

cost of gas goes down = more driving

cost of storage goes down = larger applications using more resources are built

cost of bw goes down = more content delivered with lower marginal expectations of return

The tube sites in the Alexa top 100 didn't get their by displaying dirt cheap non-exclusive licensed content. They got there by showing A list exclusive content they stole, sometimes within days or less of being released.

I think that the bigger picture is a WHOLE lot more than most people are considering.

1. Its the willingness to steal content.
2. Its the desire to find things for free
3. its the availability to cheaply get the platform to run it on.
4. Its the lack of enforcement on it.

And many more.

Economy 55%
Shady Cross Sale, Fucking Customer 40%
Tubes 5%

free inventory is good for a business...ive been living off it for years...
the big tubes take it to a higher, uncontrolled level...

True, people will clue into the fact that the ads on those sites are fake sooner or later.

:2 cents:

even people who are not in the biz know porn is hurting from all the free shit online now from tubes

:2 cents:

bump bump

Actually, you're mostly wrong.

It's a combination of several key factors being in place all at the same time, to create the perfect situation for a major paradigm shift.

Dropping bandwidth prices have certainly played a very large role. They're a key factor in making the business model feasible.

However, without the other factors in place it would not have played out in the same way. Instead, merely following the trend of dropping bandwidth prices, we'd have ended up with MGPs with vids that got longer and longer.

The content delivery model (tubes) is significant because it made videos far more accessible. Streaming flash video players moved content to the browser instead of the media player, made content immediately available rather than forcing surfers to wait for downloads to finish, made having a single video on a single page the new standard, and concentrated content on a single site rather than merely listing and linking from a single site to many others.

Summarized, the new content delivery model turned content into a full-blown stand-alone service.

But still, there are more factors.

One major factor that can't be overlooked is availability of content. Content has gotten *much* cheaper than it was just a few years ago, and the amount of content available in digital formats has also grown immensely. The former has helped legal tubes, by vastly lowering investments needed on content, while the latter has helped illegal tubes, by ensuring the continuous availability of fresh new content.

Then there is the DMCA, which created a loophole that startup tubes used to avoid initial investments in content. Without it, many of today's major tubes would never have been able to grow as large as they have.

And finally, there's the matter of sponsor availability. Dating sites and cam sites are developed far enough to make them viable as primary sponsors, minimizing the need for conversions from porn sites. At the same time, there are still relatively few free alternatives to the paid dating sites, people haven't gotten so familiar with them yet that they know they're mostly frauds, and geo-ip advertising is still new enough to be somewhat effective. On the cam side, there still are relatively few free/paid hybrids, and enough "fresh" surfers to make advertising more effective than it would be otherwise.

There isn't just a single thing that changed it all. It's a combination of factors coming together at the right place and the right time :2 cents:

first of all, great discussion.

i would argue your first point with consumptionjunction, where i belive they were offering vids through a browser from before 2002. i heard at one point, and i dont remember from who, but that they were using half of natnets bandwidth

tube sites are filled with content from dvd libraries, many of it late 90s, early 2002s content. many sites started with this type of content years ago and i dont see the difficulty to transforming it to a content suitable for tube sites

and cam/dating sites have been around for at least 5 plus years, but i dont think thats critical for a tube site to be solvent, many sponsors can be profitiable, if you can keep the bw and other costs down

With the immense popularity of youtube, the tube site model has become a universally recognized standard.

It's not *just* delivering streaming video, or delivering video through the browser, or delivering content on a single site. It's delivering a specific type of content in a format that most people are already intimately familiar with.

It's far cheaper now than it was a few years ago, though. Plus, more dvds have been turned into digital formats. Plus, internet-specific production has filled millions of harddrives around the world with numerous porn scenes. Getting full scenes for $5 a piece was nearly unthinkable a few years ago. Now, it's not uncommon.

They have been around for over 5 years, yes. But in the case of cams, increasing broadband penetration has helped their appeal quite a bit. In the case of dating, the business model will become somewhat less viable over the next few years as free alternatives start popping up more and more.

And I have to disagree with you on the idea that many sponsors can be profitable for tube sites. Dating, cams, penis enlargement, male sex toys, gambling, dating guides, sex guides... the list isn't nearly as long as it is in most other industries, since many mainstream companies will not advertise on porn sites.

But my main point is this: don't try to look for single explanations. Focus on the big picture, the context in which specific types of sites thrive, and the factors that contribute to it.

Like CJ sites, which did well in an environment where searching for porn mainly entailed actually *searching* for porn. Or TGPs, which initially grew popular in an environment filled with CJ sites, and where people would bookmark something that offered content the moment they found it.