When she started her Web site two years ago, Jenteal thought it would just be a hobby. A self-described "total nerd" in high school, she taught herself PhotoShop and put together a site with her fiance, Chris. Then, like legions of other Internet entrepreneurs, Jenteal, 23, found herself in deep. "I gave up all personal time," she says. "I'm at the office at least 10 hours a day, and even when I'm home I'm on my laptop." It is just midmorning on the U.S. West Coast, and Jenteal is still groggy from dancing the previous night at a club called Bob's Classy Lady. Later she'll perform a live masturbation scene on her Webcam, or maybe do an explicit online chat. She sees it as building her future. "If in the next year I'm making $50,000 a month from the Web site," she says, "I'll cut way back on [making] movies and dancing. This is going to carry me past my porn career."
In the late 1970s a new technology--cheap, easy, universally accessible--changed the porn business forever. As the movie "Boogie Nights'' showed, the catalyst was video, which had lower production values than film and made name porno actors an unnecessary expense: suddenly, anyone could be a "star.'' Now online technology is having the opposite effect on porn. "Adult'' sites were a $1 billion industry in 1998, according to Forrester Research. But what's new is how "the power structure is changing,'' says Danni Ashe, a stripper turned porn mogul. "The performers are more involved," she says. "Virtually every woman in the business now has her own site."
Ashe was among the first in this less-celebrated class of cyber-entrepreneurs. In 1995, after being arrested onstage at a Florida strip club, she needed a change. Ashe read the ''HTML Manual of Style'' and MIT guru Nicholas Negroponte's "Being Digital,'' then launched Danni's Hard Drive. For $19.95 a month, members can view soft-core photos and video footage, trade racy chat or buy lots of Danni products. According to Ashe, the site has 25,000 members.
That's just a tiny fraction of the audience for online sex. In June Americans spent more time on health sites than porn sites for the first time, but more than half the requests on search engines are "adult-oriented," says Mark Tiarra, who runs the nonprofit trade group United Adult Sites. Though commercial sites are increasingly cooperating with filter companies like NetNanny and SurfWatch to keep kids out, 25 percent of teens in a recent survey conducted by Yankelovich Partners and Websense Inc. said they had visited X-rated sites.
The actors may be the entrepreneurs, but this new porn industry still needs techies. Joshua Rosenfeld, 27, recently left Big Five accounting firm Arthur Andersen to join the Vivid multimedia porn empire. This porn-geek partnering can lead to culture clash. But more often, the mix is serendipitous. "We're in a time of geek chic," says Jenteal. "A lot of girls go for that type." Rosenfeld says he's having a lot more fun, and he certainly appreciates his new colleagues' charms. But for him the real e-thrills lie elsewhere. The other day, he says, "I heard this one star was learning to build her own site. I thought, 'Wow, that's really sexy'."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
