14 DAY TRIAL // I just want to say from the beginning that this is only pure speculation so there's nothing official yet. It appears like Penthouse Media Group is interested in buying Various Inc., the owner of Adult Friend Finder, a web-service which became famous through the adverts distributed on millions of pages. TechCrunch reports that Penthouse is willing to pay approximately 500 million but once again, this is only a rumor and we're still waiting for an official statement from the two companies. In case you never saw an Adult Friend Finder ad, although I think it's impossible, you could identify it from the sexy women appearing in them along with the name of the city you're living in. The adverts aim to convince that some sexy women are waiting to talk with you, the only requirement being an account.
Adult Friend Finder is not so pleasant for all the users because many of them consider the adverts way too annoying and useless. But even so, the company recorded an impressive profit which obviously caught the attention of other giants that are now aiming to buy its web technologies.
Alex Eckelberry from security vendor Sunbelt confirmed that Adult Friend Finder may not be among the most honest websites on the web although it earned millions from its advertising platform.
"Putting aside the dubious moral issues, it's routinely pushed in social networking spam (such as Myspace), and it's been advertised heavily in malware. Maybe it's pushed by affiliates and not the company, but we've all heard that argument before. It's still the company's responsibility," he wrote.
Now, it's pretty interesting to see what the next step is since we have a deal between a soft porn magazine and an online sex community service often accused of malicious activities. However, we should wait to see if the transaction is confirmed and if it all turns to be true.