Sex and Pornography Sites "Circle Jerks"  Embraced by Mainstream Web Promotion Companies

While all of you were looking at SPAM a far greater threat has grown out of the slime.

I hate to say it but, as usual, the pornography and sex sites seem to be in the drivers seat as far as web advertising concepts are concerned.

Whereas Amazon.com claims that they invented affiliate marketing, in my opinion, they did not. The online pornography sites had affiliate programs in place first. But since they are "underground" the media didn't notice and Amazon got the credit.

Does the sex industry care that they didn't get the credit. No? They make way too much money to worry about who did what first.

Now the dreaded "circle jerk" technique that the porn sites perfected has hit the big time as well. It will be interesting to see which mainstream company takes credit for this "innovation".

Wondering what a "circle jerk" is? It is a completely obnoxious and intrusive way to force a visitor to load a web page they didn't intend to see. It is called a "circle jerk" because it is so prevalent in the sex industry sites. It is virtually impossible to gain control of your browser once you have entered one of these sites.

While the page you are looking at is loaded a Java crapplet (oops, applet) is silently and without your consent loading another web page in a window behind the one you are now viewing. When you close your browser you are staring at a new site in a new window, one you never intended to visit. The "circle" part is that the new window is doing the same thing. It is loading yet another page behind itself in another new window. And so on, and so on, and so on....

You get the idea. The usual end result is your browser will crash from too many windows and you will lose work and have to reboot.

You thought spam was bad. This is worse.

I have never crashed my browser because of a spam. How about you?

Not worried cause you don't visit sex sites?

Well guess what folks. The mainstream web companies have decided "What the heck, if the sex sites do it - so will we. It means more page views so who cares about the visitor. Scr*w em!"

Don't believe me?

Well I know of at least 2 programs that are similar to banner exchanges that have started doing this instead of a banner. They describe haw much better than banners these are cause you have "guaranteed visitors".

Worse, last week I visited a high profile promotion site that claims they can supply your site with up to 2 million views per month using this technology for a few cents per visitor.. As they said "for only $60,000 you can buy your way into Media Matrix top 500 sites.

They even suggest you use the technolgy to artificially build up traffic and then sell your company based on the heavier traffic for hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit. Presumably you should sell it before the buyer finds out that not one of those 2 million visitors ever intended to visit your site.

Wait a few months until this becomes widespread and you won't be able to visit a site without hearing that "crashing sound" and watching your work go down the drain if you haven't saved it.

What can you do? Well the simplest solution is to disable Java on your browser. Who needs it anyway. I have removed all Java code from my sites anyway as, in my experience, Java code can crash browsers even if it isn't loading another page in the background.

Another gooid thing to do is email the site owners of any site that uses this underhanded trick and inform them you will NEVER be visiting again and will tell all your friends and business associates not to visit. Then maybe we can use "viral unmarketing" to stop this cr*p.

Nuff said.

Ed Osworth

Disclaimer: The above is the authors personal opinion only. The above is not meant in any way to criticize any particular person or company. It is simply a commentary on of the state of web marketing in general.

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