YouTube porn rival scores 2 million members

by Angus Kidman

Thursday, 22 March 2007

One of YouTube's most famous policies is that the site is "not for pornography or sexually explicit content". That's a situation which has helped rival XTube, which is happy to display adult movies, to grow rapidly.

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XTube, which promotes itself with the tagline "the greatest thing since the orgasm", was first registered as a site in November 2004. Like its much better-known and family-friendly rival, XTube allows users to upload their own video content, and claims that it will remove any copyrighted content from commercial adult movies on receipt of an official complaint.

Unlike YouTube, it doesn't care how many people appear naked in those videos, though it does bar illegal content such as child pornography and extreme violence.

That approach appears to be slowly paying dividends. "Early March we broke the 2 million member mark," it announced in its site newsletter earlier this week. That still makes it a minnow next to YouTube, which has more than 130 million visitors each month.

Future expansion plans for XTube include a "sex wiki" with contributions from its user community, and XTube Local, a directory service for adult stores and clubs.

A recent study by TopTenReviews estimated that the online porn industry is worth more than $US4.9 billion, with Internet porn sites attracting 72 million visitors a month. However, many online businesses resist involvement with adult content to avoid legal problems and community criticism.
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