Startup Thinks Real Sex Can Sell
Serial entrepreneur Cindy Gallop dreams of a future with Internet porn. However, she hopes you won’t have to smack your laptop shut to hide that explicit web content. She’s aiming to redefine the selection of sex films available online.
In 2009, Gallop gave a TED Talk explaining a phenomenon she’s experienced dating men in their twenties. Gallop, now 52, says Internet porn has become de-facto sex education, teaching young men that “real sex” should look like the sex they see performed by professional actors (her TED Talk includes graphic examples of the behaviors she’s encountered).
スタートアップ、リアルセックスは売れると考える
インターネットポルノと共にある将来が、起業家シンディギャロップの夢だ。しかし、露骨なウェブコンテンツを隠すためにラップトップをピシャリと閉じるようなことなく堂々と見ることが出来ることを望んでいる。オンラインで閲覧できるセックスフィルムのセレクションを見直すことを目指している。
2009年にギャロップは、20代の男性とデートした経験談についてTED Talkを行った。現在52歳のギャロップは、インターネットポルノは性教育の基準となっており、若い男性に「本物のセックス」がどのように行われるべきかをプロの俳優のパフォーマンスを通して教えていると語っている。（彼女のTED Talkには彼女が遭遇した実行動のグラフィック例を含む。）
Gallop isn’t anti-pornography, admitting to Mashable that she “loves porn” and “thinks it’s great,” but she believes there’s a fundamental issue with porn as default sex education. Though porn existed before the Internet, Gallop says porn has achieved unprecedented accessibility through the Internet.
“It used to be that maybe a kid found his dad’s Playboy magazine,” Gallop told Mashable. “Now, it’s 8-year-olds who don’t go looking for porn; they’re shown a picture on somebody’s cellphone in the playground, or they Google ‘penis’ and they’re one or two clicks away from something they never expected to find — it’s really innocent.”
ギャロップは、反ポルノな訳ではない。事実、Mashable に、「ポルノが大好き」で、「素晴らしいと思う」と語った。しかし、彼女は、ポルノがセックスの基本教育となってしまう事に根本的な問題を感じているのだ。ポルノはインターネット以前から存在していたが、ギャロップは、インターネットによってポルノが今までと比較にならないほど近接なものとなったという。
「昔だったら、例えば子供がお父さんのプレイボーイ誌を見つけたとか、その程度のことでした」とギャロップはMashableに語る。「今では、8歳児がポルノを探している訳でなくても、遊び場で誰かの携帯の画像を見せられたり、グーグルで”ペニス”と検索して、想像もしなかったものを見てしまうまで1～2クリックになってしまう事もあるでしょう。とても無邪気な子供が。」
“I want to socialize sex. I want to make real world sex socially acceptable and, therefore, socially sharable.”
During her TED Talk, Gallop launched MakeLoveNotPorn.com, which was not intended to be the start of a business — Gallop already had her hands dirty with another startup, If We Ran the World, and seriously advises against working on two startups at once.
Gallop began receiving daily emails from men and women “pouring their hearts out.” MakeLoveNotPorn.com received some 3,000 daily hits, coming from more than 180 countries, with zero promotion from Gallop besides her TED Talk.
ギャロップ氏は言う。「私はセックスというものを社会的なものにしたい。現実のセックスを社会的に受け入れられるものにしたい。だからこそ社会的にシェア出来るものにしたい。」
ギャロップ氏は、既にもう1つの新規事業のIf We Ran the Worldで手がいっぱいで、1度に2つの新規事業を手掛けることはしないようにしていたため、TED Talkの間にビジネスを目的としていなかったMakeLoveNotPorn.comを立ち上げた。
毎日「気持ちをさらけ出す」内容のメールが男性からも女性からもギャロップ氏のところに届き始めた。彼女のTED Talk以外、一切のプロモーションや宣伝を行っていないにも関わらず、MakeLoveNotPorn.comは180カ国以上から約3,000もアクセス数を獲得した。
Over time, she realized she’d opened an important conversation she cared deeply about, and that to nurture it, she needed to make some serious changes.
Gallop charged herself with taking down porn as default sex education by turning MakeLoveNotPorn into a highly scalable, sustainable business.
“I believe all businesses of the future should be about doing good and making money simultaneously,” Gallop says. “I want to socialize sex. I want to make real world sex socially acceptable and, therefore, socially sharable.”
Gallop says she’d like to accomplish what Hugh Hefner did to legitimize porn in the 20th century, by redefining exactly what constitutes porn in the future. Her concern is that 99% of sex on the Internet consists of professional performances.
Enter Gallop’s solution: MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, a user generated site of real people having real sex. For $5, users can upload a video; other users pay $5 to rent that content for three weeks. Half of the rental costs go back to the creators, incentivizing people to upload their own content. The cost to upload maintains for quality control, to ensure people are not spamming the site. All of the chosen videos are curated by the MakeLoveNotPorn.tv team.
If you’re wondering whether there’s a market of people to volunteer their home movies, rest assured Gallop has no shortage of volunteers.
“Social media has lowered the barrier for shame and embarrassment everywhere,” she says. “MakeLoveNotPorn.tv is about creativity, and porn is about homogenizing real world sex. I want to put creativity back into sex.”
The site, which launched in private beta a few weeks ago, has also been flooded with invitation requests. Currently about 11,000 people have received access from more than 36,000 requests.
Like porn sites, MakeLoveNotPorn.tv labels videos with the types of performances you’re going to see. Unlike porn sites, these labels are meant to capture the spirit of what Gallop calls real sex, such as “Brooklyn,” “longdistance” and, Gallop’s favorite, “owowowheynow.”
“Real world sex is funny; porn world sex is not funny,” she explains, “I want to reassure people that embarrassing things happen to all of us.”
Several traditional porn stars and directors are very excited about MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, and the site features videos uploaded by porn stars, sharing their “real life” sex, including couple Lily Labeau and Danny Wylde.
To further engage Gen Y, MakeLoveNotPorn.tv incorporates many of the social networking staples that make people love Facebook, Tumblr or Foursquare. The site includes stickers and a sexual social currency. You can put together playlists of videos, which you can also gift to another person.
There’s also a real-time rating system, which lets users give a “yes” — the equivalent of a Facebook like — by pressing the space bar while watching videos. Gallop hypothesizes this feature could lead to a breakthrough on human sexuality on the scale of Alfred Kinsey‘s works.
Getting MakeLoveNotPorn.tv off the ground was full of hurdles. Gallop struggled for months to find funding, explaining that, though the site’s profitability was not questioned, venture capitalists didn’t want to associate with sex or porn. “This should be a VC’s wet dream,” she laments. Banks wouldn’t let her open an account for a business with the word “porn” in its name. PayPal and Google Checkout didn’t want to be the MakeLoveNotPorn.tv billing system.
“Every obstacle I’ve encountered is exactly why I’m doing this,” Gallop says.
Though it may be awhile before looking at porn on your laptop in public is considered socially acceptable, the site’s early buzz suggests she may be onto something big.
Want do you think of this crowdsourcing startup? Do you think MakeLoveNotPorn.tv can change the de-facto sex education the Internet has created?
