SAN FRANCISCO - SkinVideo, a paysite formerly associated with Usenet search engine GUBA, announced Monday that it will now only offer access to licensed professional content that is Usenet free.
The move away from Usenet, a large bulletin-board community powered by servers located around the world on which anyone can upload content, began more than a year ago. SkinVideo initially enhanced its user interface, search tools and filters for easier navigation, but control over the content became an issue, said Kathleen Morford, the company's vice president of marketing.
"Based on user feedback, we realized that we needed to be able to control our own content and provide users with regular updates of high-quality material, as well as have greater access to their chosen interests," she told AVN Online. "Having full control over our content allows us to provide our users with the best experience possible. It not only improves the quality of what is on the site and allows us to get more of exactly the type of content that our users want, [but] it allows us to package things in different ways."
Over the past year, SkinVideo bought content in bulk, conducted testing and made dramatic changes to its program in an effort to provide more consistent content more quickly, Morford said.
The announcement should alleviate the concerns of copyright holders, some of whom felt SkinVideo was a gateway to piracy during its association with Usenet.
"We never had any control over what got posted to Usenet, similar to other video sites like YouTube, but we have always respected copyright holders and complied with takedown notices immediately," Morford said.
The new version is designed so that the company can serve users just as well as it always has.
"Our site will be evolving more rapidly than it has in the past," she said. "We're moving from a completely automated system to one where we monitor what our users want and proactively go and get it. It's a big challenge that we're excited to take on."
For more information, contact Kathleen at [email protected].
