LAS VEGAS - Internext 2009 kicked off in the Palms Hotel this morning, when the first seminar commenced at 9 a.m. to a packed crowd. Tom Hymes, news director of Sex.com, moderated a four-person panel that included Mark Frieser, the founder of my VIP Room; Farley Cahen, vice president of new media at Digital Playground; Peter Goldstein, vice president of engineering at VideoBox; and Gonzo, communications and marketing consultant for AEBN. The topic du jour was "New Platforms for Adult: Advancing Technologies Push the Porn Agenda."
Hymes opened the floor to the panel after a brief introduction that can be surmised thusly: The industry is changing.
The first speaker to jump in was Gonzo, who discussed at length the Real Touch product, a teledildonics device based on haptic technology that can simulate motion, temperature and moisture for a life-like experience. And "experience," he said, is key to competing with tube and torrents, since that is something that cannot be duplicated or repurposed or pirated.
Goldstein's take on new technology is that adult needs to piggyback off the mainstream's technological developments, such as Internet-aware devices and mobile delivery.
Cahen believes that driving traffic back to your original paysites via mobile streams is a technology worth exploring.
In terms of content's relationship to its delivery device, Frieser believes that "Device drives device" - which is to say, content is more and more driven by the various delivery devices and technologies it's presented though. He, too, concurs with Goldstein, that the industry needs to take the functionality of mainstream and bring it to the adult marketplace.
All agree that in light of the advent of torrent and tube sites, "experience" needs to be emphasized, through technologies such as live-chat cams or streaming video.
The conversation then dovetailed into a lengthy discussion about torrent and tube sites and how the adult industry can compete. Cahen believes intelligent product placement is one way to go, while Frieser points to location-based hook-ups that can gather information about the user's location and advertise appropriately. But Goldstein had a different point of view entirely: tube sites are not going away, so instead of spending time trying to combat them, the industry should look at their arrival as an opportunity.
Internext continues today through Wednesday at the Palms Casino and Resort in Las Vegas.
