Amid the bustle of day one at the 2000 Consumer Electronics Show, there popped up an idea whose time, you might think, should have come at least three years ago, considering how popular, for better or worse, cybersex has become in the age of the Internet.
But FeelTheNet is bringing forth a line of what the company's Michael Kadie calls Internet-controlled sex toys, enabling online lovers to virtually play with each other in cyberspace. They introduced the product at last fall's AdultDex exhibition and now have reached "the culmination of eighteen months to two years" of development.
How have the new cybersex toys taken off? "Slowly," Kadie acknowledges. "Right now, we've got too many false sites on the Web…spoof sites. So it's like we get a lot of traffic with a lot of people saying, 'it sounds really cool, but we want to see a site review before we spend a hundred dollars'."
About the actual FeelTheNet Web site (www.dsex.net, which Kadie says is easier to remember than FeelTheNet, believe it or not), he says goes through a standard of banners and full explanation, with some sample video clips and a full tour of what the products do and how they are used, as well as Internet chat set up "so that a person can download a free client, use the site for free, interact with people with the toys, in their case their toy commands will not be physical but…will join them and show them what they would be feeling if they had the right box."
Once the spoof sites are conquered, Kadie says, he thinks the real thing will take off, thanks to a large volume of interest generated since the AdultDex rollout.
"I expect that, as soon as we can get over the hump of a little credibility, that we're going to take off," he says. But he admits that the cybersex cybertoys can be hard at an electronic level to control. Most prominently, they tended to "blow transistors up," a kink he says has since been resolved.
