CYBERSPACE — How does the Web love porn? Let us count the ways…You know, just in case Old St. Nick needs help stuffing the stockings.

According to Tynan, although the adult entertainment industry didn’t invent any of the Web’s major tech innovations, it was at the forefront of their proof and popularization in most cases. With a quote from Lewis Purdue, author of Eroticabiz: How Sex Shaped the Internet, he encapsulated a prevailing analysis: “Without business and technical pioneers in the online sex business, the World Wide Web would never have grown so big so quickly.”

Porn’s “nice” contributions are:
– Online payment systems, which helped porn generate the most significant share of cyber-revenues between 1999 and 2006.
– Streaming content, because the adult industry was the first to perfect a video streaming method that worked, thereby paving the way for the vast amounts of streaming content on the Web today.
– Live chat, which arose out of adult’s desire to push interactive boundaries.
– Broadband, because, really, who wants to watch streaming, interactive porn at dial-up speeds?
– Traffic optimization, which demonstrated how to monetize online content.
– 3G mobile services, because porn has slipped the desktop leash and now has to find somewhere else to play.

The “naughty” side of the scale includes:
– Spam, because porn proved how profitable unwanted commercial email could be.
– Malware, which may have represented only tame attempts to corral more traffic in the beginning but eventually spawned vast underground criminal enterprises.
– Pop-ups, pop-unders and mousetrapping, with which adult shot itself in the foot.
– Browser hijacking, because the practice was related to and often employed malware and was frustrating beyond belief.
– Domain-name hijacking, which reached true prominence among cyberlore with the hijacking of Sex.com.
– Paris Hilton, because, honestly, wouldn’t we all be just a little bit happier without her rise to fame based on such cinematic gems as 1 Night in Paris?

Tynan’s complete article, loaded with sarcastic wit and snarky double entendres, is here: http://tinyurl.com/7dpx8b.