Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 191 posts

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#71

Post by duderific »

the_newest_acct wrote: post #59
NullPrefix wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate on this point?

Verizon (cable specifically) already sells "adult content" in the form of premium channels, like most cable providers in the U.S. In fact they have defended carrying of such channels by saying consumers want the choice. While they don't produce it, they are certainly making money off of it and defending the choice to do so. See https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/verizon-defends-decisi...

Well, there's "adult content" and then there's porn. The stuff on cable channels is pretty much "soft core" which stops just short of a certain line. I guess that's how they can defend it.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#72

Post by ocdtrekkie »

dx87 wrote: post #60
wesammikhail wrote: post #22

Off topic: I am genuinely curious, why doesn´t Pornhub create a Youtube competitor? it is probably the best positioned company on earth to do so. Any info as to why they haven´t done it or why it would be bad idea for them to do so?

Someone brought up the same question on /r/showerthoughts on reddit, and one of the Pornhub employees said that there had been internal talks about it, especially after Youtube started demonetizing tons of channels, but they weren't actively developing anything. The main issue I can see would be advertisers not wanting to be associated with the brand, even tangentially. YouPorn had sponsored an esports team that ran…

I mean, the biggest issue is saying the team is affiliated with a porn site. But if "MindGeek" sponsored an eSports team, my guess is most people would be fine with it, in part because they didn't know that it was a company that owns porn sites.

While obviously they'd restore adult content to Tumblr, my guess is they'd keep Tumblr as a somewhat mainstream brand, and not let it be too directly associated with their existing properties to maintain mainstream appeal. A YouTube competitor would fall along the same lines.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#73

Post by jlarocco »

Lowkeyloki wrote: post #37

I was discussing companies who use Tumblr for official communication, like System76 and NPM, on another story earlier this week, and how it's cringy and not a good look IMHO. (My comment was flagged for some reason despite having 5 points and 8 replies. How does this site work?) I hope PornHub does buy Tumblr! Can you imagine how quickly all the corporate blogs would scramble off of the platform to avoid association…

I don't think most people associate Tumblr with porn. If you weren't searching for it, you weren't likely to find it.

I used Tumblr, and didn't know it was used for porn until the complaining when Verizon banned it.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#74

Post by mcshay79 »

rajacombinator wrote: post #42
olivermarks wrote: post #30

pornhub is one of Mindgeek's properties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek I've never understood their business model - they seem to host endless illegally uploaded porn yet more and more porn seems to be being created. Not clear where the money is made ultimately. Mindgeek dominate the online porn world which gets huge traffic. https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2018-year-in-review Tumblr was historically another…

Yes the economics of this industry are really puzzling to an outsider. As someone who has tried running ads on these properties it’s hard for me to imagine how anyone is making money in this business. And yet...

Do you think it is possible that making money is not their primary motivation?

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#75

Post by the8472 »

leesalminen wrote: post #69
imgabe wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it cringy? It's an easy way to host a blog. I'd rather any company focus on their main business rather than futz around with blog hosting.

Medium would be a better place to host a corporate blog. When I think Tumblr, I think porn not corporate blogging. Although to be honest, that image is fairly recent for me. I only heard about the depths of Tumblr porn after it died.

tumblr is (was) dual-use. so are twitter and reddit by the way.

It's like saying corporations don't want to associate with the internet because there's porn on it.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#76

Post by michaelchisari »

no1youknowz wrote: post #21

If I were Pornhub, I'd really low-ball them. After all Verizon wrote down the purchase by 30%? [0] and I'm sure they just want rid by now. So between 10% - 50% is a good offer. On Pornhubs side, it's essentially a steal. They could very well foster a good atmosphere when it comes to porn and then offer through their mindgeek advertising platform access to Tumblr for their marketing affiliates. These marketing affilia…

Also, the whole issue that sparked Tumblr's decision was illegal content, and Pornhub most likely has the resources and technical capability to detect and remove it quickly, whereas Tumblr was a ghost town of moderation that attracted the worst types of content.

Of course, Tumblr needed a sheriff but they chose a nuclear weapon and the rest is history.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#77

Post by laken »

duderific wrote: post #71
the_newest_acct wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verizon (cable specifically) already sells "adult content" in the form of premium channels, like most cable providers in the U.S. In fact they have defended carrying of such channels by saying consumers want the choice. While they don't produce it, they are certainly making money off of it and defending the choice to do so. See https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/verizon-defends-decisi...

Well, there's "adult content" and then there's porn. The stuff on cable channels is pretty much "soft core" which stops just short of a certain line. I guess that's how they can defend it.

Pay-per-view hardcore content is a thing. They make bank on it.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#78

Post by djsumdog »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #72
dx87 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone brought up the same question on /r/showerthoughts on reddit, and one of the Pornhub employees said that there had been internal talks about it, especially after Youtube started demonetizing tons of channels, but they weren't actively developing anything. The main issue I can see would be advertisers not wanting to be associated with the brand, even tangentially. YouPorn had sponsored an esports team that ran…

I mean, the biggest issue is saying the team is affiliated with a porn site. But if "MindGeek" sponsored an eSports team, my guess is most people would be fine with it, in part because they didn't know that it was a company that owns porn sites. While obviously they'd restore adult content to Tumblr, my guess is they'd keep Tumblr as a somewhat mainstream brand, and not let it be too directly associated with their ex…

It would get out though. There'd be a lot of hoops that PornHub would have to go through to make a wholly owned subsidiary they could use to spin-up a YouTube/Vimeo like platform on and it not come back to pornhub in the PR/advert sense.

Although we all know a few people here and there who don't know YouTube is owned by Google, the majority of people do understand the YouTube + Google/Alphabet relationship.

Re: Pornhub wants to buy Tumblr

#79

Post by djsumdog »

JohnFen wrote: post #64
freewilly1040 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you are wondering why they don't create a non-porn video site, the reason is that these sites live off ad revenue, and mainstream advertisers don't want their brand associated with porn.

If that's so ironclad, then how do porn video sites stay in business? Advertising is not the only way to generate revenue, and even if they want to go the advertising route, there are non-mainstream advertisers that may be interested.

A lot of these site (like RedTube and such) originally just posted videos and straight up violated copyright claims until they got DMCA takedowns. Eventually they started workout out deals with the studio for low-quality version and clips, sharing revenue for people who clicked through to buy full or HD versions.

Then eventually the big studios just started buying the toob sites and cut out the middle. Most of them serve a subset of studio content or clips. Tumblr's limited video size/length really helped contribute to this model. Most people watch the clips, but the people who buy can get sucked into a lot of hidden subscriptions they forget to uncheck, or even direct up-selling they'll intentionally select.

Post reply on HN