Nick Denton has something for you: The Gawker Media owner is pawning off Fleshbot, the porn site he has operated for eight years in addition to sites like Gawker, Gizmodo and Deadspin.

In addition to, but not really “along with” — Fleshbot, which is most definitely not safe for many workplaces, has always been kept at a distance from Denton’s other properties, at least when it came to advertising and PR.

It’s not that other Denton sites are prudish — ask Brett Favre — but they’re still in the business of attracting mainstream advertisers. And Fleshbot could never do that.

“As GM has grown, its sales strategy and technology platform have ceased to effectively support Fleshbot’s needs. We think someone else could be a much better partner to grow the site with us,” editor Lux Alptraum wrote in a “for sale” post yesterday.

As with all things Denton, the move will touch off a little wave of speculation about What It All Means, etc. I figured I’d kick things off this morning by asking him myself, via IM.

Denton: “Just hadn’t fit for a long long time.”

Kafka: “y i know. so why not anytime in the last tk years?”

Denton: “Oh, I don’t know. Because I’m slow to realize the inevitable?”

Thanks to AVN for spotting, and Jim Romenesko for aggregating.

Meanwhile! In other Nick Denton news: Denton held a party in his Soho loft last night, to toast the new editors of the Guardian, the U.K. paper that’s trying to establish a footprint in the U.S. (join the club). Had you been there (I wasn’t), you would have seen bold-faced names like the New York Times’ Bill Keller, New York magazine’s Adam Moss, (rhetorical) bomb-thrower Naomi Wolf, and some of the folks who spend time figuring out how to Occupy Wall Street. “Best party ever,” Denton types.

Here’s the host (sitting on the back of the sofa), along with fellow online heavyweights Jacob Weisberg (Slate), Arianna Huffington (duh), Janine Gibson (guardiannews.com) and Henry Blodget (Business Insider). “152 million global uniques,” Denton boasts.

The issue, which first started appearing on Facebook pages a couple days ago according to ZDNet, has generated a growing wave of revulsion online as some users took to Twitter to complain of graphic and lurid imagery that goes far beyond ordinary porn.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

But there’s at least one big, dirty exception.

Time Warner Cable said yesterday that its video-on-demand business dropped significantly in the last quarter. Asked to explain where the drop came from, CEO Glenn Britt came clean, more or less — much of it is because, instead of renting “3 Way Cheating Wives” in HD for $9.98, his customers are getting their fix on the Web for free.

There’s something quite special about listening to buttoned-down corporate chieftains talk about their porn-profit margins. If you ever get the chance, you really should hear for yourself. But this excerpted transcript will have to do for now:

One of the things going on with VOD is that there’s been fairly steady trends over some time period now for adult to go down, largely because there’s that kind of material available on the Internet for free. And that’s pretty high margin. That’s been not just this quarter, but going on for some time period.

To be fair, drooping porn rentals don’t account for all of Time Warner Cable’s VOD decline. CFO Rob Marcus said the porn gap is responsible for about a third of the drop, and that the rest is because there weren’t many big pay-per-view events like boxing matches last quarter, and because regular movie rentals are down, too.

Ah. So maybe iTunes and Netflix, et al, are taking dollars away from cable, right? After all, Time Warner Cable video subscriber totals dropped last quarter, again. “I wouldn’t draw any conclusions quite yet,” Marcus says.

Aside: Remember when NBC and “Saturday Night Live” didn’t really want their stuff on the Web? Now they make stuff designed for Internet distribution–note shout-outs here to Amazon, Orbitz, Facebook, FarmVille, Netflix and Angry Birds. And porn!

This is SNL’s second crack at Assange. Last week, it imagined what he’d do if he morphed into Harvey Levin. Also quite good!

Via Roger Ebert, who Tweeted about this.

Today, in a sharply worded post titled “In Defense of Standards, Ethics, and Honest Financial Reporting at Hewlett-Packard,” prominent venture capitalist Ben Horowitz took to his blog to shoot back at the plethora of critics of the Hewlett-Packard board for their conduct related to the controversial jettisoning of CEO Mark Hurd.

That came after Hurd admitted to filing inaccurate expense reports related to an outside contractor who worked closely with him, and who later alleged sexual harassment on his part. Those charges were dropped after Hurd settled with the woman, named Jodie Fisher, but before HP could complete an investigation.

Since then, the board has been under fire from Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison, who hired Hurd as the database giant’s president, and former GE head Jack Welch, who laid into the HP board this week.

Now Horowitz has fired back and here’s a taste of his ire, which is aimed at execs, the media and more:

If a CEO is prone to compromise for any reason, he will have every reason. This time it was his expense report. Next time will it be a marginal accrued liability? A deal that came in at 12:01 am on the last day of the quarter? This is a slippery slope that a public board simply cannot tolerate.

And:

Who is Jodie Fisher? According to press reports, Fisher is a former Playboy model, reality show contestant, and softcore porn movie actress with no work history relevant to her job with HP. She was hired by Hewlett-Packard and paid up to $5,000 per meeting to meet with Fortune 50 CEOs.

The mainstream press has reported these facts as mundane, ordinary, and hardly worth concern. I disagree. HP employs over 300,000 people. Every single one of HP’s employees is keenly interested in the qualities, skill sets, and behaviors that HP values most. Financial compensation and access to the CEO are the most important ways that HP communicates what it values to its employees. Jodie Fisher had more access to the CEO and was paid more than 99.9% of HP’s workforce, despite having no traditional qualifications.

It’s important to note that this was not Hurd paying for his personal extracurricular activity out of his own pocket. This was the Hewlett-Packard Corporation paying a softcore porn movie star with no relevant work experience more than it pays Harvard graduates with 20 years of industry experience. This was the company spitting in the face of the people who worked hard and sacrificed every day to help the company win in the market. It was completely and categorically unacceptable.

And:

There are many who take the view that business is singular in purpose–to increase shareholder value. They further take the position that constraining that purpose in any way is inefficient and counterproductive. The mainstream press seems to have broadly adopted this position in its attacks on HP. The Wall Street Journal Op Ed page even complained that businesses were being held to an unfair standard when compared to politicians.

I do not subscribe to this view. Running our companies with no moral or ethical standards is bad for society, bad for the country, and ultimately leads to criminal behavior.

So, what do you really think, Ben?

Horowitz does have an interest in the situation, which he discloses clearly at the top of his piece: His longtime business and now venture partner is HP (HPQ) board member Marc Andreessen.

And the Silicon Valley soap opera continues….

“The first time someone created a camera, there was someone who said, ‘Wouldn’t it be good for someone to take off their clothes in front of this camera?’”

– Interpret LLC’s Michael Gartenberg on the porn industry’s plans for the iPhone 4′s FaceTime video chat feature

Because that’s what you get with the new iPad app from The Sun.

The U.K. tabloid, owned by News Corp. (NWS)–as is this Web site–is famous for its “Page 3 girls,” who show up topless and smiling every day in the paper’s print edition and on its Web site.

And they’re in the $7.99 iPad app, too, according to this numbingly in-depth review/slideshow from paidContent. Here’s the relevant screenshot, which paidContent has made safe for work but that would otherwise feature a half-nekkid lady’s boobies:

How’s that work? According to paidContent, The Sun gets away with it because Apple (AAPL) requires the app’s users to confirm they’re at least 17 years old.

But if that’s the case, wouldn’t every vaguely porny app be embracing this workaround? And if so, wouldn’t that make iTunes as steamy as Google’s (GOOG) Android offering?

I’m hoping that Apple’s PR staff can sort this out for us. But I’m not hopeful.

On Monday night, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley posted a Flickr photo of a BlackBerry screen featured on the latest episode of the red-hot television potboiler, “Gossip Girl.”

The text message on the screen (which I took a picture of here) reads, “Elizabeth Fisher just checked in at the Algonquin Hotel.”

Wrote Crowley in the image title, which he also posted on Twitter: “Checkins on Gossip Girl? No mention of foursquare, but hey, still pretty hot.”

Not hot at all, actually, because there have been zero checkins on Foursquare in the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite as yet!

If you watched the show, you also would know they are too busy hooking up in an endless round-robin, with an occasional Belgian prince drug dealer thrown into the mix, to claim domain mastery of Geisha or Henri Bendel.

(If you don’t believe me, see a clip from this episode, titled “The Hurt Locket,” below, in which Blair Waldorf is dressed up like a porn version of “Anna Karenina.”)

But way to try to ride Serena van der Woodsen’s hip Prada coattails, Dennis.

In fact, the note–which was sent to billionaire playboy Chuck Bass, who is searching for his possibly-not-dead-in-childbirth-for-which-he-has-blamed-himself-mercilessly mother, after running into a suspicious lady at his father’s gravesite on the first anniversary of his tragic car-accident death, who was carrying flowers and then dropped a locket with an engraved “E,” for Elizabeth, which was also his mother’s name…you get the idea–was from Bass’s private investigator, simply telling him she had checked into the hotel.

As in, “Gimme a key and extra towels.” And not as in: Trying to be Mayor of the Algonquin Hotel.

None of the characters on “Gossip Girl” would try to be mayor of anything, since they own the town.

Which is also pretty clear if you watched the show–which just returned from a painfully long hiatus–as closely as BoomTown does.

And? who am I, besides a keeper of the “Gossip Girl” integrity?

That’s a secret I’ll never tell.

You know you love me.

XOXO

Enjoy:

Google’s Sergey Brin took the stage at the TED conference this morning for a brief discussion about the search giant’s recent declaration that it will pull out of the country if it has to continue to censor results.

Google has been quiet about its plans in China since it said a month ago that it was contemplating leaving the country over a range of issues centered on onerous censorship laws there.

Explaining Google’s “new approach” to China in a Jan. 12 blog post, chief legal officer David Drummond wrote:

“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

While not adding a lot more to what has been said, Brin did shed some light on his own and Google’s thinking.

While the Google (GOOG) co-founder would not directly blame the Chinese government for the security attacks on his company, or for others, he did note that the entity was so huge that there was no telling where they came from.

“It might represent a fragment” of the government, he said, although he did not give any specifics, in a short Q&A interview with curator Chris Anderson at TED, which has been taking place this week in Long Beach, Calif.

Brin also noted that he wished all those who underwent cyberattacks, as Google claims it has, would go public.

“If all companies came forward, we’d all be better,” he said.

As to where Google goes from here, after declaring its “intent” to withdraw from China, Brin said the company would definitely not censor political results in the future.

That said–nearly a month after the original statement, Google does continue to censor search results in China.

This will end, Brin seemed to indicate, although he did allow that other kinds of censorship around porn or gambling barred by Chinese law, similar to what Google does in other countries, would remain in place.

Brin said he did not know how the situation would turn out or if Google would come to some kind of compromise.

But he said he is “always optimistic” about some kind of detente with China.

“We want to find a way to work within the Chinese system,” said Brin, but without having to censor political results. “A lot of people might think I am naive and that might be true.”

Boomtown was in the front row when game exec Dan Rosensweig left the stage at Guitar Hero to take over as CEO of Chegg, the Web’s top textbook renter. Rosensweig had only been strumming along at Guitar Hero since March, so the move was unexpected. Kara did the full-disclosure dance with AOL’s earnings report. Hit her post for all sorts of great source documents from the new republic of Aol. (AOL). She closed out the week with a thinky piece on Facebook and what it could do in the news aggregation biz. With nigh 400 million users, the number of traded links just to Rick Astley music must be staggering. This one is worth the read.

From deep in his snow-covered technology bunker, Walt let fly a Personal Technology column on two tiny new laptops with a lot to offer. Dell’s (DELL) M11x, the latest release from its Alienware line, is a move to pack lots of power into a tiny package. Sony’s (SNE) Vaio X on the other hand, is all about the lightness. The Dell got high marks for performance, even if the battery life wasn’t as killer as the graphics. The Sony, however, received a rare Mossberg superlative. Being the lightest laptop Walt has ever tested does come with some drawbacks, of course. Chief among them was measly battery life. Mossberg’s Mailbox was short but potent this week. Walt gave some quick clarification to an iPad question and reassured readers that YouTube will be available on the device, even if Flash won’t. He then gave some no-nonsense advice about dumping the older IE6 in favor of a newer, safer, and more supported browser. Katie got to do a little online shopping this week in her review of Flit.com, a Web service that allows you to search multiple stores at once and aims to streamline the shopping experience. She liked the novel way Flit deals you out to store’s Web sites but lets you see their offerings before you click over. No word on if whether or not she bought those black heels she was looking for.

John brought some great news to Google Nexus One users with a post early this week about a meaty software upgrade. Just like that, Google (GOOG) flipped the switch on multitouch functionality in the device. We can now add pinch-zoom to the list of Googleable words. It seems that 12 percent of Americans had something in common with Monster.com (MWW) this week; they were both looking for job listings. Monster purchased Yahoo’s HotJobs for $225 million cash. We drove by earlier today, and Carol Bartz still has Yahoo (YHOO) Games and Yahoo Shopping out on the lawn next to the “for sale” sign. John rounded out the week with a little crystal ball-gazing about the future of Apple and TV. The speculation is centered around Apple’s (AAPL) recent moves in the TV space and how the iPad might play a role. We can add TV to the list of things the iPad might be.

MediaMemo always gets to cover those wonderfully chewy stories where the tech sector and the mediascape bump and grind. This week Peter opened up with a post about YouTube’s most recent foray into legitimate movies. The Google-owned video giant offered up paid views of Sundance films and considered the effort an overall success. One of the big what-ifs of 2009 was actually more of a “when,” as in, “when will Hulu start costing money?” Peter reported that a Disney (DIS) exec said the decision hasn’t yet been made. Weekend Update will be stocking up on old episodes of “The A-Team” and “Another World” in case Hulu finally puts up the wall. Peter rounded out the week with the answer to a question that’s been on our minds for some time now; will we live in a world with a publicly traded porn Web site. When investors didn’t seem to be hot for FriendFinder Networks, the company canceled its pending IPO. Weekend Update supposes that porn will just have to remain the Web’s biggest nonindustry.

Put on your rain slickers or snow shoes, depending on where you live, and enjoy the winter weekend. Or, you could stay indoors and play some Guitar Hero, futz with a new laptop, hunt for a job, shop for some shoes online and watch TV at Hulu. That’s what we’ve been doing.

FriendFinder, a collection of porn sites and niche social networks, was supposed to start trading this week, after filing for a public offering more than a year ago. But this morning, the company pulled its IPO, citing “market conditions.”

I’m assuming this is not a euphemism for the Dow’s plunge yesterday, but instead a polite way of saying “we couldn’t find buyers.” The AP reports that FriendFinder, which was trying to sell some 20 million shares for $10 to $12, sold 15 million shares at $7 each earlier this week in pre-IPO trading.

Now FriendFinder will have to find some other way to resolve its massive debt issues. The company throws off a lot of cash, but all of that–and more–is getting hoovered up by loan payments. It reported $45 million in income from operations in the first nine months of last year and spent $75.3 million on interest payments in the same period.

Meanwhile, if you’re in the market for a high-end sports car, this may be the time to make the FriendFinder team an offer. The company has yet to sell the Ferrari 360 Modena it bought from its founder for $125,000 in 2006. FriendFinder is carrying the car on its books at $95,000, but I’ll bet it’s willing to negotiate.

To start, let’s just dispense with huffing and puffing angst over whether or not people should broadcast their credit card transactions online.

Because that’s what you can do on a new site, with the unlikely name of Blippy, headed by longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Philip “Pud” Kaplan.

Blippy has already gotten a lot of oh-dear attention for its premise, which is yet another step in the continuing socialization of everything a person does–the inevitable trend toward radical transparency online.

Now in invitation-only private beta, the new service sends out messages about the type and amount of the transaction, every time you use your credit card–at least the one you designate your “Blippy” card–for others to see and comment on.

In other words, a kind of Twitter for spending.

The twist of Blippy–whose motto is: “What are your friends buying?”–is that it is more passive than the more active tweeting or texting.

(Presumably someday, your body will tweet from the gym, or while you are sleeping.)

While most of the transactions don’t contain a lot of information–for example, “cat spent $3.55 at In-N-Out Burger”–Blippy is obviously going for deeper information and already has it for sites like Apple (AAPL) iTunes and Amazon (AMZN).

Retailers and restaurants and any vendor might also benefit from the flow of information, finally knowing who their best customers really are and perhaps rewarding them.

And, of course, the key part is that your friends see what you are buying and you can all jabber online about what you bought, how much you paid and what you thought.

How it is all going to make money is being pondered, of course, but you might imagine a dedicated Blippy credit card or some kind of analysis of the data or sale offers to users.

And integration with Facebook and Twitter seems inevitable, eventually widening the circle of nosy friends, as does the emergence of reviews, mobile apps, search and more.

Kaplan came to All Things Digital Worldwide HQ–also known as the cottage behind my house–to chat about all this and more.

He is, of course, best known for a site he created during the Web 1.0 bubble, called FuckedCompany, which chronicled the ongoing start-up implosion as it happened.

Kaplan later started online advertising service AdBrite and was an Entreprenuer-in-Residence at Charles River Ventures for a short time after he left AdBrite.

It was there that he met Blippy co-founders Ashvin Kumar and Chris Estreich. Funding for the trio is forthcoming, said Kaplan.

Here’s Kaplan holding forth in a longish video interview, where we curse and discuss my porn-and-Cheetos spending habits (don’t judge!):

And, in the spirit of full transparency, here is Kaplan in two videos on YouTube–in one he is sweetly singing “Easy” with his wife and in the other, he is drumming like a heavy metal lunatic:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091223/philip-pud-kaplan-talks-about-blippy-the-twitter-of/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20091204/almost-famous-sprouts-matthew-mcneely/ http://allthingsd.com/20091204/almost-famous-sprouts-matthew-mcneely/#comments Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:17:16 +0000 Drake Martinet http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=18699 A feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.

This week: A virtual visit with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Matthew McNeely and Sprout, the build-it-yourself Flash tool that lets anyone create customized Web site widgets.

Who: Matthew McNeely

What: VP of Engineering, Sprout.

Why: Sprout is a Web-based, WYSIWYG Flash editor that allows individuals and businesses to build customized content that can be embedded on their own sites. Sprout’s creations (known as “sprouts”) are also frequently incorporated into social media campaigns.

Where: Sproutinc.com (corporate bio); San Francisco, although Matthew says the team is “truly distributed,” as he lives in New Hampshire (analog); Facebook Fan Page (Yes, you can write on its wall); @Sprout (Twitter).

Who else: Slide; SlideRocket. But, “not too many that focus on branding the way we do.”

---

Five Stats You Won’t Find in His Facebook Profile

Worst Job: I grew up in Indiana, and, in the summers, I would de-tassel corn.

Has a Geek Crush on: I’m gonna get letters from all my Apple (AAPL) friends for saying this: Bill Gates of Microsoft (MSFT).

Gadget of the Moment: I finally got an iPhone, but I got it for $50, refurb.

Tech Wish: I wish I could build a sprout for my iPhone, but that means it would need to run Flash.

Fails at: I’m not a very good communicator, and every once in a while I catch myself closing up and not communicating with the [Sprout] team the way I need to.

---

Bio in 140 Characters

Shares a hometown w/James Dean. Picked corn until he got his first computer. Was a software engineer/consultant before moving to Sprout.

---

The Five Questions

What does Sprout bring to the table that others don’t?

At the most basic level, it’s about the speed. Before Sprout, you really needed to understand Flash and the sort of movie metaphor that it puts out in order to use it. Now, it’s much faster. If you know PowerPoint, you can use our product.

We also have a big push in the social networking space. That’s unique to us. If you are looking to put out a really rich media campaign on a social network, there’s no better service. You can also change things on the fly. Someone in the ad department can say, “Hey, this ad isn’t working.” And you can change it in five minutes, and it’s back up.

Who isn’t using Sprout, but should?

I can think of two examples. One would be, say, a yoga instructor who was also tech savvy. She could build up a quick shell of a Web presence with Sprout and sell it to other yogis who just want to give classes, but still have a nice, clean, updated Web site.

The second thing would be a porn sprout. That’s one industry that could really benefit from our technology, but just hasn’t yet. I mean, imagine, video clips and little libraries. We’ve seen some slightly suggestive things come across the bow, but no one has really gone all the way yet. I really hope you print that.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: A Sprout spokesman wanted to make sure readers knew that McNeely was kidding here, of course. Sprout's terms of service forbid such a use of its technology.]

Is there a formula for an attention-grabbing Sprout widget?

It’s different in every industry. Overall, a little animation and really good-looking graphics help. But, when it comes to engagement, we do have some idea.

It has to be contextually relevant [in the social media space], your friends should be fans of this Facebook page [for it to become popular], stuff like that. I mean, with good design, you can get someone like this guy from Des Moines who has basically cornered the market on real estate widgets.

Who should buy Sprout?

You mean besides Google? Seriously, though, we do work with Google (GOOG) quite a bit, and I’d love to see us become the small- to medium-size business ad-building tool for them.

Most real geeks have memories where they saw something new and said to themselves, “Dang, I love living in the future.” What’s yours?

My brother and I got this old North Star computer at this garage sale or something, and I programmed through the night to get this thing to predict, you know, randomize lottery numbers. I never won anything, of course, but I was just so enamored by it.

That kinda got me hooked into the notion that you can work on something and lose yourself in it.

---

The In Living Color Interview

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091204/almost-famous-sprouts-matthew-mcneely/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090702/microsoft-pulls-projectile-puking-promo/ http://allthingsd.com/20090702/microsoft-pulls-projectile-puking-promo/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:00:14 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=20698

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090702/microsoft-pulls-projectile-puking-promo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090630/china-delays-filtering-initiative/ http://allthingsd.com/20090630/china-delays-filtering-initiative/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:00:52 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=20521

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090630/china-delays-filtering-initiative/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090630/green-dam-given-red-light/ http://allthingsd.com/20090630/green-dam-given-red-light/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:39:20 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=20472 China’s youth must face the corrupting influence of Internet porn without government guidance for a brief while longer. The Chinese government said Tuesday it will delay enforcing a new requirement that all new computers sold in the country include Green Dam/Youth Escort Web-filtering software. The postponement comes just one day before the July 1 deadline for the software to be deployed.

It’s not yet clear whether Beijing delayed the order because PC makers were having trouble supplying all new machines with the program or in reaction to the international outcry over it. In a letter to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last week, an international group of business associations that includes most of the world’s major technology companies, called upon China to abandon the plan, which it said “raises serious concerns for us and seems to run counter to China’s important goal of becoming a vibrant and dynamic information-based society.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090630/green-dam-given-red-light/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090625/sexually-frustrated-there%e2%80%99s-an-app-for-that/ http://allthingsd.com/20090625/sexually-frustrated-there%e2%80%99s-an-app-for-that/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:04:52 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=20215 The parental controls included in iPhone 3.0 have opened up a rich and fertile frontier in Apple’s App Store: Porn. An app called “Hottest Girls,” which previously featured pictures of women in their skivvies, this week began featuring ones of ladies wearing quite a bit less. “We uploaded nude topless pics today,” says app developer Allen Leung. “This is the first app to have nudity.”

But far from the last, I’m sure.

A few weeks back, this sort of update never would have made it into the App Store, but now that the device supports age restrictions for applications, Apple (AAPL) has adopted a more permissive stance toward
“objectionable content.” Browse the Hottest Girls page on the App Store and you’ll find the following warning:

“You must be at least 17 years old to download this game.
Rated 17+ for the following:
Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity
Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes”

“Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity?” Interesting. It would seem then that Hottest Girls isn’t just the first app to boast nudity, it’s also the first to set up shop in what may become the iPhone’s red light district. It will be interesting to see to what uses the adult entertainment industry can find for the iPhone’s accelerometer….

UPDATE: Apple seems to have pulled the app. It still appears in the iTunes store, but it’s apparently no longer available for download.

UPDATE: The developers of Hottest Girls claim the app wasn’t pulled; it sold out. “The Hottest Girls app is temporarily sold out,” they explain. “The server usage is extremely high because of the popularity of this app. Thus, by not distributing the app, we can prevent our servers from crashing. Those who already have the app will still be able to use our app. To answer the question on everyone’s mind: Yes, the topless images will still be there when it is sold again.”

UPDATE: Apple now says it was indeed responsible for pulling the app.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090625/sexually-frustrated-there%e2%80%99s-an-app-for-that/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090625/new-chinese-version-of-google-safesearch-eliminates-google-entirely/ http://allthingsd.com/20090625/new-chinese-version-of-google-safesearch-eliminates-google-entirely/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:30:37 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=20209 Google’s mission, to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible, has once again run afoul of the Chinese government, which has a similar goal, but would much prefer that certain information stay inaccessible. And so, on Wednesday evening, Chinese citizens found themselves once again unable to use Google, Gmail and YouTube as their government condemned Google as a purveyor of porn.

“According to complaints from many residents, Google’s English language search engine has spread large amounts of vulgar content that is lascivious and pornographic, seriously violating China’s relevant laws and regulations,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regularly scheduled news conference. “I’d like to stress that google.com, as an Internet enterprise providing services in China, should earnestly abide by Chinese laws and regulations.”

The disruption of Google (GOOG) services follows a widely criticized mandate from Beijing requiring all computers sold in the country to include Green Dam, an application designed to prevent citizens from viewing “offensive” content, which in the Chinese government’s case includes all manner of material. From a report by the Open Net Initiative, an academic consortium dedicated to the study of censorship and surveillance:

The version of the Green Dam software that we tested, when operating under its default settings, is far more intrusive than any other content control software we have reviewed. Not only does it block access to a wide range of web sites based on keywords and image processing, including porn, gaming, gay content, religious sites and political themes, it actively monitors individual computer behavior, such that a wide range of programs including word processing and email can be suddenly terminated if content algorithm detects inappropriate speech. The program installs components deep into the kernel of the computer operating system in order to enable this application layer monitoring. The operation of the software is highly unpredictable and disrupts computer activity far beyond the blocking of websites.

…The deeply intrusive nature of the software opens up several possibilities for use other than filtering material harmful to minors. With minor changes introduced through the auto-update feature, the architecture could be used for monitoring personal communications and Internet browsing behavior. Log files are currently recorded locally on the machine, including events and keywords that trigger filtering. The auto-update feature can used to change the scope and targeting of filtering without any notification to users.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090625/new-chinese-version-of-google-safesearch-eliminates-google-entirely/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090605/polls-at-d7/ http://allthingsd.com/20090605/polls-at-d7/#comments Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:06:21 +0000 Kara Swisher http://d7.allthingsd.com/?p=2177

Hey, politicians aren’t the only ones who get to do fancy polls!

Walt and I had a bunch of them about a variety of tech topics that we pulled out to ambush, ooops, pose to speakers at our seventh D: All Things Digital conference last week.

For the D7, we commissioned a study of digital trends from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB), a global market research and consulting company and a conference production partner.

PSB conducted 1,005 interviews within the general U.S. population–you know, real people who are not geeked out.

One showed–despite Silicon Valley hype–how Twitter was still in its infancy, in awareness, engagement and size, which we got Co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams to react to onstage. (They could care less.)

Another showed that the biggest problem that users of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone cited was the poor AT&T (T) network. (Sorry, Randall Stephenson!)

Another looked at the declines in usage of the MySpace social networking site, which we know its new CEO Owen Van Natta enjoyed reacting to in front of the crowd. (Okay, he did not enjoy it.)

Also, no one is paying for subscriptions to blogs, which the Huffington Post impresario Arianna Huffington said was okay, since consumers will only fork over money for “very weird porn.” (Yes, she said that!)

In any case, here is a selection of slides that were shown and discussed during various speaker sessions.

Click on any slide below to enlarge, then hit “next” or “previous” on either side of the slides to page through.

• Walt and Kara commissioned a study from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB) for the D7 conference.
• Leaders in the smart phone market.
• Mobile app pricing and pricing sensitivity.
• Primary reasons why consumers don’t own iPhones.
• Search engine providers by market share.
• How consumers choose search engines.
• Market share across social networking platforms.
• MySpace user behavior.
• Reasons that consumers use MySpace less frequently.
• Usage patterns for Twitter.
• Why do you tweet?
• User attitudes towards monetizing Twitter.
• Do you plan to buy a netbook?
• Consumers are not yet familiar with "cloud computing."
• Knowledge of corporate social responsibility is lacking.
• Commitment to community is most important criteria.
• Newspapers are still very popular online sources.
• Few consumers pay for subscriptions to online content.
• Pricing sensitivity for online content.
• Some consumers are willing to pay for news, especially in tech and finance.
• Most consumers wouldn’t pay for blogs.
• Who should improve broadband in the U.S.?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090605/polls-at-d7/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090605/twitters-a-big-baby-apple-iphones-att-problem-myspaces-blues-no-ones-gonna-pay-for-this-blog-we-went-poll-crazy-at-d7/ http://allthingsd.com/20090605/twitters-a-big-baby-apple-iphones-att-problem-myspaces-blues-no-ones-gonna-pay-for-this-blog-we-went-poll-crazy-at-d7/#comments Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:48:06 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=14220

Hey, politicians aren’t the only ones who get to do fancy polls!

Walt and I had a bunch of them about a variety of tech topics that we pulled out to ambush, ooops, pose to speakers at our seventh D: All Things Digital conference last week.

For the D7, we commissioned a study of digital trends from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB), a global market research and consulting company and a conference production partner.

PSB conducted 1,005 interviews within the general U.S. population–you know, real people who are not geeked out.

One showed–despite Silicon Valley hype–how Twitter was still in its infancy, in awareness, engagement and size, which we got Co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams to react to onstage. (They could care less.)

Another showed that the biggest problem that users of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone cited was the poor AT&T (T) network. (Sorry, Randall Stephenson!)

Another looked at the declines in usage of the MySpace social networking site, which we know its new CEO Owen Van Natta enjoyed reacting to in front of the crowd. (Okay, he did not enjoy it.)

Also, no one is paying for subscriptions to blogs, which the Huffington Post impresario Arianna Huffington said was okay, since consumers will only fork over money for “very weird porn.” (Yes, she said that!)

In any case, here is a selection of slides that were shown and discussed during various speaker sessions.

Click on any slide below to enlarge, then hit “next” or “previous” on either side of the slides to page through.

• Walt and Kara commissioned a study from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB) for the D7 conference.
• Leaders in the smart phone market.
• Mobile app pricing and pricing sensitivity.
• Primary reasons why consumers don’t own iPhones.
• Search engine providers by market share.
• How consumers choose search engines.
• Market share across social networking platforms.
• MySpace user behavior.
• Reasons that consumers use MySpace less frequently.
• Usage patterns for Twitter.
• Why do you tweet?
• User attitudes towards monetizing Twitter.
• Do you plan to buy a netbook?
• Consumers are not yet familiar with "cloud computing."
• Knowledge of corporate social responsibility is lacking.
• Commitment to community is most important criteria.
• Newspapers are still very popular online sources.
• Few consumers pay for subscriptions to online content.
• Pricing sensitivity for online content.
• Some consumers are willing to pay for news, especially in tech and finance.
• Most consumers wouldn’t pay for blogs.
• Who should improve broadband in the U.S.?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090605/twitters-a-big-baby-apple-iphones-att-problem-myspaces-blues-no-ones-gonna-pay-for-this-blog-we-went-poll-crazy-at-d7/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081229/the-mystery-of-the-adult-friendfinder-ferrari-sort-of-solved/ http://allthingsd.com/20081229/the-mystery-of-the-adult-friendfinder-ferrari-sort-of-solved/#comments Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:31:25 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=2527 Here’s a question that’s been puzzling me and some other folks for the past few days: What does a money-losing porn and social-networking company do with a $95,000 car?

The answer: It gives it away.

Or at least, that’s what Adult FriendFinder was planning on doing with the Ferrari it bought from founder Andrew Conru. The car was supposed to be awarded to one of the company’s many “affiliates”–tens of thousands of Web sites that refer traffic to Adult FriendFinder for a fee–that won a 2006 “top growth” contest.

Thanks to MediaMemo reader Tommy New for (not so gently) pointing out the contest to me (don’t click on this link unless you’re up for rough language as you read about the online porn business). Another MediaMemo reader tells me that the reason that the company still owns the Ferrari, which was originally valued at $125,000, is that the Web site owner who won the contest took cash instead of the car.

I’m still waiting to hear back from Andrew Conru or Adult FriendFinders’ current management, which just registered the company for a $460 million IPO, to confirm this. But those answers make plenty of sense to me. Affiliates are a key part of the company’s business: It paid out $46.4 million to some 110,000 participants during the first nine months of 2008, according to the company’s prospecttus. That’s nearly 20 percent of its net revenue during that period.

Those payouts are crucial, because Adult FriendFinder’s subscribers, who make up the bulk of its revenues, are always on their way out: Monthly churn hovers around the 20 percent mark. Adult FriendFinder says affiliates help generate about 44 percent of Adult FriendFinder’s business.

Thus, contests and promotions to entice affiliates are standard operating practice at Adult FriendFinder. This month’s contest promises the winner $40,000 and a trip to Los Angeles to hang out with some Penthouse Pets.

So that’s one mystery resolved. Except I still don’t understand why Adult FriendFinder bought the Ferrari from its founder in the first place. I’ll let you know when the company returns my calls.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081229/the-mystery-of-the-adult-friendfinder-ferrari-sort-of-solved/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081227/what-kind-of-car-do-investors-get-with-the-friendfinder-porn-ipo/ http://allthingsd.com/20081227/what-kind-of-car-do-investors-get-with-the-friendfinder-porn-ipo/#comments Sat, 27 Dec 2008 18:22:25 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=2503 Anyone who buys into the FriendFinder Networks IPO won’t just be buying a piece of a debt-ridden, money-losing collection of porn sites and social networks. They’ll also be buying a piece of a car the company bought from one of its founders, and now values at $95,000.

I still haven’t heard back from FriendFinder Networks or Andrew Conru, who appears to be the founder who sold his company his car in 2006. But MediaMemo readers tell me the car in question is a Ferrari 360 Modena, similar to this model on sale, via eBay (EBAY), at Excel Auto of Boca Raton, Fla. (click image to enlarge):

I thought this car might actually be the same one that FriendFinder owns, since it says the car in question is being held for sale, and because FriendFinder is also based in Boca Raton. But a manager at Excel tells me that’s not the case.

Disclaimer: I need to note that while I appreciate the tips MediaMemo readers have passed along, they remain unconfirmed. So it could be that FriendFinder owns a different kind of car that it purchased for $125,000 two years ago and now values at $95,000.

The bigger question: Why would FriendFinder buy a Ferrari (or any other kind of car) from its founder a couple of years ago? And what has it done with it since? Did employees of the month get to take it for a spin? Has it been mothballed? Did it sit parked in front of the company’s HQ as an incentive to work harder and longer?

(UPDATE: A partial answer — the car was supposed to have been given away as a contest prize.)

As always, if you’ve got thoughts on the matter, you can comment below, or reach me directly at peter@allthingsd.com. If you want to be completely anonymous, you can use the blind tip box here.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081227/what-kind-of-car-do-investors-get-with-the-friendfinder-porn-ipo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081226/friendfinder-ipo-invest-460-million-get-a-95000-car/ http://allthingsd.com/20081226/friendfinder-ipo-invest-460-million-get-a-95000-car/#comments Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:53:11 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=2481 I only had enough time to assess the big picture when I wrote about the FriendFinder Network IPO earlier this week: Money-losing porn/social-network company drowning in debt, needs public investors to bail it out.

But the FriendFinder prospectus may turn out to have multiple Christmas gifts for those who work their way through it. For instance, Nick Wingfield, my corporate cousin at The Wall Street Journal, dug up this gem under “related party transactions”:

In another interesting tidbit, the company says [predecessor company] Various purchased an automobile from the founder of Various for $125,000 on October 27, 2006 (the founder in question appears to be Andrew Conru.) The company doesn’t say what kind of car it is or why it bought it, but it doesn’t appear to have gotten a very good deal. The filing says the vehicle is currently ‘being held for sale and in 2006 was written down to its estimated net realizable value of $95,000.’ A FriendFinder spokesman didn’t immediately return a call for comment.”

I’ve also lobbed queries in to Andrew Conru and to FriendFinder’s corporate HQ, but haven’t heard back. But perhaps MediaMemo readers who are more autocentric than I am (I’ve owned one car in my life–a 1994 Toyota Tercel with vinyl seats and no air conditioning) can help answer one of my questions: What kind of used car can you get for $95,000?

Please share your thoughts with us via the comments section below; if you find the registration process too onerous, you can leave an anonymous comment via the tip box. (UPDATE: Some readers tell me it’s a Ferrari 360 Modena).

In the meantime, I’ve made my own rudimentary attempt to gauge the market for $95,000 cars: A trip to eBay’s (EBAY) Motors showroom. Here’s a sampling of what’s available in the $90,000 to $95,000 range today (click on each image to enlarge).

2006 Bentley Continental Spur. Starting bid: $95,000

2003 Ferrari 575. Starting bid: $95,000

2007 Porsche 911. Starting bid: $95,000

1970 Ford Mustang Boss. Starting bid: $90,000

2004 Lamborghini Gallardo. Starting bid: $95,000

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081226/friendfinder-ipo-invest-460-million-get-a-95000-car/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081201/like-trying-to-take-pee-out-of-a-swimming-pool/ http://allthingsd.com/20081201/like-trying-to-take-pee-out-of-a-swimming-pool/#comments Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:44:22 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=8873 The Federal Communications Commission imposes decency standards on publicly broadcast radio and television signals. No surprise, then, to hear it’s looking to do the same to the free wireless Internet service it envisions in the AWS III spectrum. At its December meeting, the FCC is expected to push forward with another major spectrum auction, one that would require the winning bidder to use a portion of those airwaves to offer a free broadband service. Smut-free, as well, according to an FCC notice on the auction:

…the licensee for the 2155-2180 MHz spectrum to provide–using up to 25 percent of its wireless network capacity–free, two-way broadband Internet service at engineered data rates of at least 768 kbps downstream. Additional obligations associated with the licensee’s free broadband service would include a requirement to provide a network-based filtering mechanism for the free Internet service in order to protect children and families.”

Quite a goal, “protecting children and families” from government-defined obscenity. A daunting one, though. As a wise man once said, “You can’t take something off the Internet…. That’s like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.” And in Internet porn’s case, it’s like trying to take it out of a cesspool.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20081201/like-trying-to-take-pee-out-of-a-swimming-pool/feed/ 0