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| Blogs > 49AK > Out of the Ordinary |
Chickens and Eggs
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Chickens and Eggs They've paved paradise, put up a parking lot. That is how I am feeling about the blogs these days. I know I am not alone. [blog NascarFox] is feeling similarly, though I would say that her woes are much greater than mine. Why each of us joins Senior Sizzle is a personal matter, and probably very different. If you're a regular reader here (or anywhere else in the blogs), the reasons we stay are probably pretty similar. We want to connect with people that we have some rapport with. When I first joined Senior Sizzle almost four years ago, it was about getting laid, plain and simple. The original owners of Senior Sizzle certainly had their problems, but I got the impression that they saw the site as a lewd and perverted social networking site where a lot of the posturing and bullshit that necessarily comes with meeting new people could be disposed of. After a few months on here, I discovered the blogs, and that opened up a whole new world for me, and turned a process that was originally rather one-dimensional (Wanna fuck? No? Next...) into something much more interesting and nuanced, and really helped me find a real niche on this site. I think a lot of bloggers have had a similar experience. For many bloggers, what started out as one pursuit transformed itself into developing friendships and relationships with people far away from us. The idea of turning a blog friend into a sex partner, while not out of the question, is for most of us, a difficult, if not impossible feat. Of course, some of you live in more densely populated areas than I do, but you also probably have a different standard for how far you'd be willing to travel to meet a blogger. Regardless, while bloggers may well be looking to meet new people for sex, they're probably looking for something at least a little different, and looking in a different way than most of the Senior Sizzle community. I wrote a post last night about the slot machine at the top of the blog page. Take me at my word that my complaint isn't about vanity - it isn't that I want to see myself there. Don't get me wrong, I do feel good when I am there... But it is also about finding out what other people are reading and liking. That goes to the core of what blogs are about - exchanging ideas, dialog, debate, getting to know the community. The problem is, the current owners may have a conflict of interest with our needs. The current owners are pornographers. Think what you will about porn - it is probably safe to say most of us are for it - but it is a big business. The biggest change that we saw when Penthouse took over Senior Sizzle was the proliferation of ads that led you to other porn sites - presumably Penthouse sites, but since I don't follow those links, I don't know where they led. But the point is, Penthouse has a financial interest in the presentation of pornography. While it is true that there were plenty of images on Senior Sizzle that would certainly be considered pornographic, the intent of this site was still to get me and you... or at least, one or two of you, naked and in bed, swapping genetic material. Which isn't inherently pornographic. If we post naked pictures on the site, then pornography is a part of the mix, but we weren't compelled to do so. As I mentioned in my post last night, NaughtyBookworm posted a blog last year (since deleted) that described some research he did on the Senior Sizzle site which demonstrated that profiles that had explicit photos in them were displayed preferentially to those that either had more generic photos or no photos at all. The implication was that in the review process, there was some editorial work done that somehow rated profile photos as being explicit or not. It may also have been that they used the photo ratings that users gave to profile photos. Either way, the editorial rating system favored explicit photos over others, and this was used to rank profile pages in the searches. The result: More pornographic images. And hence, the rub. I don't mind if there are more pornographic images on Senior Sizzle. I don't mind if there are less pornographic images on Senior Sizzle. All I want is to connect to other people. Yes, preferentially, women... But I will add that I have met some really cool men on here, too... Men that I consider to be good friends... So my primary interest goes beyond the obvious here. But what has happened is that Senior Sizzle has become a marketing engine for Penthouse's core business - pornography - which doesn't really care one way or the other if we get laid or not. As a result, the parts of the site that actually facilitate me meeting new people are allowed to fall into disrepair, or become so tedious and difficult to use as to lose most of their functionality. But Senior Sizzle puts all sorts of effort into making sure we can find whatever porn it is that we want. If you're not convinced, consider this: Since Senior Sizzle was sold, the company has changed its TOS so that we're not able to easily exchange contact information with others. It is certainly true that there is some risk in doing so freely - there are plenty of spanners, phishers and others wandering around looking to separate you from your money. But Senior Sizzle has a vested interest in keeping your interactions on their site. If you're displaying Senior Sizzle pages, you're displaying Senior Sizzle ads, and those ads generate revenue for them. Senior Sizzle has also changed the navigation of their site to make certain areas more difficult to access, in order to increase the number of ad impressions that a user experiences. They also prevent you from embedding links to outside pages in your blogs, filter certain words from the chatrooms, and send your email into a filtered folder if you don't follow their rules... Anything to keep you displaying their pages rather than someone else's. Senior Sizzle's financial issues don't make any of this any better. The pressure is on to increase revenues. My argument is, the pornographer's answer to this is more pornography... and, for most of us, this doesn't mesh with our interests - after all, if porn was what we were looking for, there is no shortage of links to it on Senior Sizzle. So when someone like me, or even worse, someone like NascarFox has a problem with the site, many times Senior Sizzle does not have an interest in fixing the problem - either because the problem is so daunting, or it is in conflict with their interests. So what started as a way to meet similarly-minded people, and by the way, see a few naked pictures... has become a way to see naked pictures, and by the way, meet some similarly-minded people. Chickens and eggs. |
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2/11/2009 4:22 pm |
Well...could care less about the porn issue and connect with my friends than be assaulted by some of the not so nice skin pics.(some are just fugly) However connecting with friends becomes harder and harder and not the good kind of hard either*L*
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I can see them advertising, because as you say, the bottom line is the almighty dollar. But like many, I pay for my profile and I should be able to shut that off. I don't like all the extra pages I have to go through to get to where I want to be. The chat rooms is a great example. That main page we hit before getting to the list of rooms serves no useful purpose to the members. They really do need to step up and deal with OUR issues and not focus as much on theirs. I know they've got money troubles, but dammit, they could get more paying members if they took what we want into better consideration and made things function like they are suppose to and quit all this redesign crap. They need to start treating us like clients and not cattle needing to be taken to market.
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Senior Sizzle is just like any other corporation, they are in business to make money. And as it has been said numerous times "Sex Sells". "Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson  
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Makes sense, I'm so pissed off with one pic, a bat with hairy wings, it's glued on the actively watched blogs row, yet not having too many watchers... but showing a pussy. And not any kind friend of those ads either, sex is not about mechanics... Only universal or also in Scotland Where to start my day or is it month Of course I39ll change I39ll do whatever you like Heatseeking missiles  Squirter's life
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