You would think that if anyone were making boatloads of money from Internet video, it would be high-traffic porn sites. You would be wrong.
“Tube sites”–adult content Web sites that mimic YouTube in hosting everything from professionally made videos to user-generated clips–have quickly risen in popularity since they came onto the scene a few years ago, and rank among the highest traffic-getters globally. Some, like Youporn and Pornhub, attract more views than the Web sites of The New York Times or Apple ( AAPL - news - people ). But like YouTube and other video-sharing sites, tube porn sites have struggled with profitability and piracy.
“Tube sites have become part of the adult landscape now,” says Steven Hirsch, co-chairman of prominent adult movie studio Vivid Entertainment. “But when all of this adult content is free, how do we get people to go from free to pay? It’s the same problem a lot of Web applications are going through, like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.”
Five tube sites–including Youporn, Pornhub and RedTube–are among the top 100 Web sites in the world, according to web analytics service Alexa.com. Vivid.com, which charges for its content, is ranked 12,718.
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