From VHS to the Internet, it’s just a fact that porn drives growth of new technologies. One of the ways it does that is by pushing on boundaries so the rest of us know where the lines are. In today’s (Feb 22, 2010) NY Times, Jenna Wortham has a great article: “Apple Bans Some Apps for Sex-Tinged Content.”
While the nature of Apple’s decision is pretty obvious and logical, there are some lessons to be learned from Wortham’s article.
Lesson 1) Participation in an ecosystem can be a risky venture, especially if you are one of thousands of companies in the pool. Here’s a quote from Fred Clark, President of On the Go Girls: “It’s very hard to go from making a good living to zero,” he said. “This goes farther than sexy content. For developers, how do you know you aren’t going to invest thousands into a business only to find out one day you’ve been cut off?”
Lesson 2) Platform owners (Facebook, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Apple) expecting to generate revenue from a wide variety of channel partners must take steps to make sure they and their partners are delivering an experience that their customers can trust. To do otherwise can be disastrous for customer sat and long-term revenue. Here’s a quote from Wally Cheng, founder of Donoma Games, welcoming Apple’s policy changes:
“There just seems to be too many of these really simple applications that do nothing but show pictures of girls in bikinis or in suggestive, adult poses. It’s cluttering up the App Store.”
Lesson 3) In a free market, there will always be alternatives. And there will always be new outlets for porn: “A Google representative said the company wanted to “reduce friction and remove barriers that make it difficult for developers to make apps available to users.” To that end, Android applications are treated similarly to YouTube videos, which are not screened before they are posted. Apps can be removed if they violate various policies, and users can flag material that they deem inappropriate, giving guidance to others.”
Oh yeah, did I mention that the iPhone vs Android war looked like the Beta vs VHS porn story? Yes I did, about a month ago.