
PaintBottle, A Porn Site For The 21st Century - ningjingzhiyuan
http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/17/canadian-trio-creates-angel-funded-paintbottle-a-porn-site-for-the-21st-century/
======
officemonkey
The problem with this site is tastes in porn vary widely. It's not a cookie-
cutter, one-size-fits-all box. Some people are like Asians, some people like
Milfs. Some people like Asian Milfs. Some people like Asian Milf massage
videos where the dude is blonde and has tattoos.

Most successful sites use tags for folks to find what they want. And instead
of a ribbon of "curated" links (ie: the content they're getting paid to show)
they show all the matching screen caps tiled for your perusal (see Beeg.com
for a NSFW example.)

Also, content. Being told "You've ran out of videos, come back tomorrow" is a
recipe for failure. It might not be a problem once there's three months worth
of content to wade through, but the site seemed small and not the "one-stop
shop" that most users are looking for.

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petenixey
I predict tough times for these guys. I remember when Zivity launched as the
last "Venture Capital funded porn startup". Shortly afterwards the team
dissolved, they gave back back most of the funding because they agreed with
the investors that it was never going to be big and the shoestring team that
remained reinvented the site as (as far as I can see) a niche, subscription
site.

I also think there are some warning bells in the Techcrunch article:

>"Internet porn sites are still shameful artifacts of a decade past — from
when the Internet was a collection of websites featuring low-resolution images
and oversized banner ads"

You should always be very careful when labelling a sophisticated and fast-
moving industry as out-dated as the accusation can come straight back at you.
The current sites could be better designed but frankly they are not bad and
represent huge technical feats, streaming massive amounts of video to huge
numbers of people. Since what they give out is free and they've been going for
as long as YouTube I think it's fair to conclude that they're monetising that
content effectively via advertising.

I'd be very surprised if this is an industry which can be won by design
improvements. I think there are largely two types of company 1) the free sites
who generate most of their cash from lead gen and advertising 2) the
subscription sites who create content that's sufficiently high quality or
niche that people will pay for it. The latter sites are the revenue stream for
the former.

Paintbottle looks to me like it's going to catch itself in between these two
models. I would guess it's going to struggle as a free site (since it doesn't
have any ads) and will also struggle as a paid site because it's not
sufficiently niche and its funding expectations may preclude the types of
revenues it could viably make. The sooner it figures out which one it actually
is the more likely it is to succeed.

~~~
wisty
> The current sites could be better designed

For who? They aren't designed to keep users happy (as the users generally are
already ... happy). They are designed to make money, by getting banner clicks
/ affiliate payements / promotion payments / whatever.

~~~
prawks
Every service used by people can benefit from making their users happy to use
it, and providing features that better enable the users' end goals. Regardless
of how they generate revenue.

~~~
coldtea
> _Every service used by people can benefit from making their users happy to
> use it, and providing features that better enable the users' end goals.
> Regardless of how they generate revenue._

The point the parent tries to make is it's not "regardless" if the two
objectives (making users happy - generate revenue) clash.

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mende
Interesting read: "However, the source of our funding is much more
interesting: We are funded exclusively by the best high-stakes heads-up poker
players in the world. Several of them grouped together and invested in Paint
Bottle. This is their first investment in a startup. We met them through
Craig, who opened their Canadian bank accounts when Black Friday happened to
poker, resulting in a mini-exodus in which many top players moved to
Montreal.”

Title could be renamed "High-stakes poker players crowdfunding next generation
porn site"

~~~
throwaway04583
It will probably be their last startup investment after this site tanks.

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tbassetto
A few months ago, we managed to get a former Lead Software Engineer of Manwin
(YouPorn & Co) to give a talk at a Paris Hackers meetup. If I remember well,
he told us that the amount of their funding has never been matched by a
company covered on Techcrunch.

~~~
manuelflara
Seeing as there have been several $100M+ funding stories on TechCrunch, I have
a hard time believing this.

~~~
coldtea
$100M+ might not be much in their line of work.

From wikipedia:

 _Manwin is the owner of many major pornographic web 2.0 websites including
YouPorn, Pornhub, Tube8, XTube, ExtremeTube, JuicyBoys, Webcams, Mydirtyhobby,
KeezMovies and SpankWire which between them generate some 16 billion visitors
per month and consequently are believed to be among the most popular websites
on the planet. Manwin also owns and operates a number of pornographic content
brands such as Brazzers, Digital Playground, Mofos, MyDirtyHobby and Twistys._

So they control half (or more) of the biggest money maker on the internet. A
far better investment than Instagram (with it's ridiculous $1 billion) ever
was.

~~~
manuelflara
Wow, I didn't know there were that big. But 16 billion visitors? How is that
counted?

~~~
corin_
People often have a hard time getting the terminology right. 16 billion
visitors is synonymous with 16 billion uniques, so not possible - by quite
some way.

If you load the site, then click a few links (say 4 pages in total), then
close your tab/window, then load the site and click a few more links (another
4 pages) then you are 1 visitor, 2 visits, 8 pageviews.

From the wording I would imagine they mean visits, but from that number
pageviews seems easier to believe.

Related: I blame Google Analytics for much of the confusion, as they are one
of the few places (at least that I've come across) that refer to unique users
as "visitors", and I've found that trips up many people when compared with
"visits".

~~~
prawn
Could Incognito/etc inflate a user count dramatically? How does Analytics
count those?

~~~
corin_
I would imagine the answer is no, but it's not something I've ever tested.
Likely will do sometime soon now you've put the idea in my head.

The reason I think no is that Google are probably clever enough to fingerprint
you in a hell of a lot of ways, but I could be wrong..

------
niggler
The same criticism is relevant for craigslist "revamping" as well:

People go to porn sites ostensibly for the content. So long as the page is
remotely usable (even if it looks like it was made back in the 20th century)
people will use it. Just like with craigslist. Unless the site had more
content or a lower price point (not sure how you beat free on the price point)
it's not clear if they'll achieve even a modicum of success

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benjash
Last time I checked the porn industry has been leading the industry in terms
of tech.

The aesthetics aren't great, but this is because it doesn't matter. Users are
otherwise concerned by other things.

In my opinion - the only "startup" in the adult industry doing anything really
original is myfreecams.

The media coverage will help them, but I cant see how this is doing anything
original or new.

~~~
noja
> In my opinion - the only "startup" in the adult industry doing anything
> really original is myfreecams.

Can you tell us a bit about what they're doing?

~~~
laumars
Basically what the domain name suggests; free cam girls.

The idea is simple: you can watch girls on cam for free. But to talk to them
you have to buy tokens, you tip girls you like and so on. So it's essentially
modeled a bit like a strip club but on a much grander scale.

~~~
vidarh
That model has been around for many years.

~~~
benjash
It's different in the way it handles payments and has a very unique way of
scoring girls. Leading to its own economy and community. Its quite different
to the other sites that offer 'free' chat in terms that the girls become mini
celebrities.

There innovation is very subtle, i don't think there's much room to really
innovate on this space. I was trying to make the point that there isn't much
room for anything original.

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dizzystar
>> _site’s clean design_

I'm not sure about this one. The design seems great if you don't mind
browsing, but I had a difficult time sticking with specific macro- and micro-
categories.

>> _Half of the Internet-connected populous watches porn._

While this might be true, I've always thought this was a tad misleading. While
half of all internet users watching a 3 minute video for giggles is one thing,
this stat seems to suggest that 50% of all people go the internet to rub one
off and do it everyday. This is sort of like saying "50% of all Americans saw
Titanic."* This suggests that we all enjoyed it, willingly watched it, and
didn't walk out half way through, none of which is true.

* I don't know the real statistic.

~~~
coldtea
> _While half of all internet users watching a 3 minute video for giggles is
> one thing, this stat seems to suggest that 50% of all people go the internet
> to rub one off and do it everyday._

I fear it's the latter. The numbers sure add up, if you ever see traffic stats
from a large ISP.

------
olalonde
> They have also noted that their average time on site is 40% higher than the
> time on site at other “tube” sites.

I'd expect the better tube sites to have a lower average time on site if you
know what I mean...

~~~
mhaymo
Well, the mean could be affected by people not finding what they want and
moving on to another site, so a high mean time could be a good thing.

I would expect that a good user experience would be reflected in a lower
median time spent on the site though, but my knowledge of people's porn habits
is admittedly limited.

------
ishansharma
I got that site was 21st century the moment I got "Our videos are not licensed
to be viewed in your country"!

Totally 21st century like Netflix and Hulu. :/

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jimmytucson
Something tells me the most popular porn sites are already designed to handle
gigantic traffic.

Youporn uses a cluster of Redis slaves to handle over 300k queries per second,
according to
[https://groups.google.com/forum/m/?fromgroups#!topic/nosql-d...](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/?fromgroups#!topic/nosql-
databases/d4QcWV0p-YM)

~~~
oftenwrong
Can't even read google groups without JS now.

------
xentronium
I don't get it, what is the economics of this thing? I've looked through the
site and haven't found any affiliate links or ads (bread and butter of free
porn sites). How does this work?

~~~
niggler
[http://user.cloudfront.goodinc.com/community/patrick/CR013_K...](http://user.cloudfront.goodinc.com/community/patrick/CR013_KoldCast_01.11.10.jpg)

------
psionski
The article didn't say, does this site have any intelligence? A modern porn
site would be like Netflix, i.e. it will slowly "learn" what (sub)genres you
like, whether you like blondes, brunettes, etc. and it will automatically
suggest videos to you.

~~~
hollerith
In my experience, Netflix's recommendations are approximately useless. Is your
personal experience, or the experiences of people you know, different than
mine?

~~~
freehunter
When I was single and watching Netflix by myself, I thought their suggestions
were good. I put a lot of time into rating movies and shows I've already seen,
and it paid off in the suggestions. Once I moved in with my SO and we started
sharing a Netflix account, the suggestions became useless. Some days she
watches what she wants and some days I watch what I want. Other times we're
watching something together that we both enjoy. The problem is, Netflix can't
handle all of this, so we end up with some rather odd suggestions (how in the
world does Netflix think I care enough about Russia's Toughest Prisons to make
it one of my top 10, right alongside Visoneers and Extreme Couponing?)

~~~
rquantz
I've been wondering why Netflix doesn't come up with some kind of personas.
Each member of the household can rate movies, and then it can make
recommendations for an individual or combination of them.

~~~
psionski
Is there a way to compute a "taste distance" for a combination of users
reliably? I think if you just throw their ratings together you'll get a point
with impossible taste (except if they like the same movies, in which case it
won't matter). Maybe return only movies that were in the recommendations of
both users?

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bprater
The main UX design miss is that, as a user, you don't have any context where
you are in the stream of videos. You also can't tell if you are moving left or
right with the videos. It ends up feeling frustrating to me.

One of the more curious UI bit is the way the videos pulse and flicker as you
scan thru the available videos. Caught my eye more than a few times as I wrote
this post.

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hwh
It certainly seems that the most important feature of a revolutionary new porn
site is ... media coverage.

------
devopstom
I found one UX/UI problem so far. There's no button for Guy on Guy. I can't
see this appealing to the gay community ;)

~~~
aiiane
Also no "solo guy".

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Yaggo
I don't get it. The UI is one of the worst I've used.

~~~
throwaway04583
I agree, I tried to scroll around and helper dialogues were popping up and
telling me to use my arrow keys. The UI is horrible and this company should
probably fold up and go home now before they waste all of their investors
money.

edit: I've become accustomed to the horizontal scrolling in Netflix's
interface, but Netflix also has (I assume) a lot of talented UI/UX people on
staff, which this site obviously lacks.

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anxx
This is great. I have always thought that porn websites miss the mark both in
1) user friendliness and in 2) quality content. This at least fixes #1 and
makes browsing a pleasant experience. Second step is to optimize the site for
mobile, because the user will likely not be at their chairs.

As for content - my 2 cents is that society we need better actors and
directors in this area. Just look at sex scenes in Weeds, Black Swan, or Shame
- much less explicit skin compared to porn, but a lot sexier nonetheless.
Frankly I am surprised that content is not better, with so much demand and
money in the business.

~~~
throwaway04583
Hey everyone, a shill from paintbottle is here.

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ses
Its easy to bash something someone's posted on HN. Having said that I think
this is a really poorly thought out business proposition that is executed
pretty badly too. Sorry to be so harsh to those that have probably put lots of
hard work into this (no pun intended), but I think it is something they need
to hear. Echoing what other people have said the porn industry is way ahead in
terms tech and experience catering for as many different tastes as possible. I
don't see that this site brings much new to the table, or if it does its not
very obvious.

------
raldi
_> The company has seen about 20,000 visits so far after a bit of coverage on
Hacker News_

What coverage? This submission itself seems to be the only time the site has
been mentioned on HN.

~~~
gyardley
The name wasn't mentioned, but I remember the article because I wrote a
comment on it:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5512507>

~~~
raldi
Ah, thanks. Disappointing that searches for [paintbottle] and
[paintbottle.com] don't show that.

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booruguru
I don't get it. There doesn't seem to be a way to save links/videos. And the
interface feels really restricted. They would have been better off imitating
something like Pinterest.

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lurchpop
haha the "jump to cumshot" button

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maked00
Don't waste your time.

Just a handful of vanilla C and B quality vids.

