Sex, Tech and the $1 billion deal
Andrew Conru trained as a mechanical engineer and grew up with churchgoing Lutheran parents in northern Indiana. He started the world's first online dating site, WebPersonals, in the 1990's - sold it for a mint and currently owns Adultfriendfinder.com (probably not suitably for work). It's now one of the most popular websites in the world. According to Alexa, its global popularity ranking is 69 (you couldn't make it up).
Conru's business is, we hear, the subject of a huge $1 billion takeover deal. Proof, if proof were needed, that sex and the internet are inextricably linked.
Now, conventional wisdom has it that porn is the great innovator - but there's evidence to suggest there may be trouble ahead for those in the business of selling sex online. So, where next?
Your thoughts welcome. From California we'll be speaking to blogger and author of Sex, Tech 2.0, Regina Lynn. And to Jerry Barnett - MD of Strictly Broadband and part of the UK's Adult Industry Trade Association.
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Comments
Rupert
Maybe a few words from this author on the programme, might further and widened the debate
Having read the Guardian's synopsis, I now realise that slap acrooss the face, thirty-odd years ago, was merely "feedback". So, all I need now, apparently, is a stick to shake...
http://books.guardian.co.uk/digestedread/story/0,,2225552,00.html
"The Rules of the Game, by Neil Strauss
John Crace
Tuesday December 11, 2007
The Guardian
I didn't want to write this book. In fact, I am as embarrassed to be writing it as you may be to pick it up. But we are embarrassed for different reasons. I'm embarrassed because I'm being paid a wad of cash to write garbage on how to pick up women. You are embarrassed because you are so desperate you have bought it.
Believe it or not, I was once like you. I was bald, puny, short, humourless, stupid and needy, and for many years I couldn't persuade any woman to go on a date with me. But then I had a revelation; by pretending to be interesting and attractive, I could become a babe magnet. Since then I've had women queueing at my door. Even lesbians find me irresistible. And if you follow my simple 30-day "Stylelife" challenge, you too can have more sex than you can shake your stick at..."
...what I can't understand Rupert is how the author knows I'm "...bald, puny, short, humourless, stupid and needy..."
Mmmm...