Penthouse made a name for itself back then when porn could not be had for free on the web and in 2004 the wired culture took its toll and the magazine filed for bankruptcy. It was purchased by PET Capital Partners which kept the name and have turned round its fortunes primarily by understanding the dynamics of the enemy that killed it: the web.
According to a recent New York Times article, “The chief executive of the Penthouse Media Group remains so bullish on the sex-related entertainment industry that he is investing $500 million in a group of social networking sites. Penthouse Media acquired Various Inc. and its subsidiaries as part of a plan to expand its reach. Various operates more than 25 networking sites and says it has a member base of more than 260 million consumers, about 1.2 million of them paying subscribers.”
Given the number of paying subscribers the combined revenue of both companies was around the $340 million in 2007.
The Various Inc. network mixes, liberally, highs and lows, owning such sites as adultfriednfinder.com alongside bigchurch.com which I touted as the place to “meet people who share the same spiritual beliefs as you.”
All that may be well and dandy but as you are reading this you really need to decide why this might be important to you and how. First off the why is evident. Social networks is where the web is heading from with more and more of them offering a tighter and tighter segregation of your online market.
If you are going to market anything online, at all, you need to enlist the power of a social network (and you really need to check out our article on how to leverage the online marketing potential of Facebook) in order to succeed.
How you do it really depends upon your own expertise, confidence in marketing to an online social group and, obviously, what it is that you are exactly selling. The message however is loud and clear: Social networks provide online merchants with unparalleled opportunities to promote their business cost-effectively and create new marketing paradigms that generate wealth and create new trends.
Ignore this at your peril.
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I’ve led the discussion on how social media and SEO are changing the processes we use to work and live, online, with the publication of my book ‘The Social Media Mind’. I combine experience in journalism and blue-chip corporate management with a penchant for explaining complex issues in simple terms. Contact me for media interviews, presentations and panel discussions
