Penthouse Goes To Church
WHILE Playboy tanks, Penthouse loosk up. The magazine’s spokeswoman Martha Lindeman says: “Traditional print is a heritage business for us, and an important part of the brand. But realistically it’s not a business that we see growing.”
Operating well under the media radar compared with other social-networking companies like Facebook and MySpace, Various, headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., has a deceptively broad and profitable reach. Its subsidiaries now include a number of online dating sites—from BigChurch.com to Bondage.com—that have signed up a combined 250 million members since they were founded and 1.2 million current subscribers who pay for content. Its biggest, AdultFriendFinder.com—which bills itself as “the world’s largest adult sex and swingers site”—is one of the most highly trafficked Web sites in the world with more than 18 million members, the company says. Bell says in the coming months Penthouse Media Group will be renamed FriendFinder Networks, Inc., and he plans to take the company public by the end of the year. The Penthouse brand will be a well-known but admittedly smaller arm of the company. […]
The company’s strategy is to use its technology platform—and its well-established network of 600,000 online affiliates that link to its sites—to support a potentially unlimited number of sites catering to daters, friend seekers and adult-content consumers around the world. Dateless in Beijing? Try ChineseFriendFinder.com. Single and interested in a threesome in Omaha? AdultFriendFinder.com has plenty of couples looking for you, many of whom have uploaded erotic pictures of themselves.
So where does Penthouse fit in? Its name recognition can help cut through the Internet clutter. “Penthouse is a worldwide trademark and we see opportunity in combining our brands,” Bell says. BigChurch.com, meet LikeMyNudePhoto.com. Opposites, it is said, attract.
Porn drove magazines. Now it drives the web….
Posted: 12th, May 2008 | In: Money Comments (3) | TrackBack | Permalink
