Twitter first debuted back on March 21, 2006 and it has remained, up until a couple of weeks ago, the “wild west of the internet,” until we learned of a potential new sheriff in town: themselves. But why now?
According to Internet Live Stats, 5000 daily tweets in 2007 grew to 500,000 in 2013. The phenomenal growth propelled the firm to a much ballyhooed IPO, going public on November 7, 2013. Therefore Twitter has stockholders to answer to and those stockholders have been less than happy with the company’s downwards earnings trajectory in 2014 according to Business Insider.
Concurrently in 2014, in September an anonymous technofile hacked into Apple’s iCloud and obtained nude photos of A-listers like Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst, and Ariana Grande. As Gawker reports, they were soon everywhere (with the help of Twitter) and the era of “revenge porn” was on.
In February 2015, Reddit officially banned revenge porn and not everyone was happy about it according to the Daily Dot. Twitter followed suit, but in the words of their own CEO, Dick Costolo, “We suck at dealing with abuse.” as quoted in The Verge. That is not the kind of things investors like to hear. But Twitter had something up their sleeve: the addition of paid ad spots that both account-holders, and for the first time, non-account-holders would see. And that’s when the wheels fell off the train.
One recent dustup reported in the Independent was that Nielson ads started appearing — along with those for NBCUniversal, Duane Reed and Gatorade — on porn-related profiles including one called Daily Dick Pics (which has barely 1000 followers, but anyway). “As Twitter works to resolve this issue, we have temporarily suspended our campaign,” a Nielsen spokesman told Adweek.
Pulling ads is like pulling revenue and the same way credit card companies flex their muscle over porn sites, it seems a similar day of reckoning could be in store for the estimated 10 million porn-posting Twitterers. But would such a pruning decrease the volume and therefore decrease the adverting rates the company badly needs at the same time?
Desire and commerce have always been uneasy bedfellows. Most users here at The Sword are much more interested in seeing favorite porn star’s morning wood and who’s having a Twitter fight with whom. But most of all, for porn fans, it’s a chance to interact directly with the object of their desires, and be directed to buy them gifts off their Amazon wish lists.
This is sure to be a fight, but in the end, you use Twitter for free, and they need to make their money. Will porn advertisers be enough to keep them from censoring dick pics? Possibly not.
Previously: Twitter on The Sword
Wait, did investors learn nothing for the Facebook tanking? Sheesh.
Maybe not as noteworthy, but I’ve recently noticed that IMDb has started hiding porn films and most porn performers, at least from its search fature. If a porn performer has a lot of mainstream credist, of course, they can’t quite sweep them completely under the rug, but try searching for most gay porn stars not named Jack Wrangler, Casey Donovan, or Tom Judson (to be fair, Tom Judson can be faound primarly because Gus Mattox cannot) lately.
While I am happy to see dick pix on Twitter, there are plenty of sites to check out nudes… Including this one. I can live if the ban it but if rather they work something out. Maybe have users specify their posts are XXX so they don’t end up appearing beside paid advertising. It can’t be That complicated…
I bet it’s because of those one million moms bitches ;P
And if the neo-Fascists win in 2016, we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!!