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Last Friday night you could have just about knocked me down with a feather when I opened up an email from Pistol Media.

Now I won't be offended or surprised if you don't know who Pistol Media is because you probably wouldn't have heard of them if you're not working in the gay area ... and even if you were then the chances are that you wouldn't have heard of them.

However, if you had gone beyond promoting the vanilla gay sites that many of the sponsors have and were looking for something with a little more depth ... a little more appeal to gay people ... then the chances are that you would have stumbled across Pistol Media.

While some sponsors were playing around the edge of the gay market Pistol Media have been serving up gay sites the like of which no one else was even daring to think about. Man these were gay sites developed by gay guys and they were raw and even a little brutal but they were what the gay community wanted to see.

Pistol Media was also right out there on the edge when it came to delivering high quality content and their videos and images were right off the top shelf. It's quite common ... and often just plain hype ... to describe a sponsor as the best in their field ... but when it came to gay content you could ... and still can ... genuinely say that about Pistol Media.

These guys know how to produce websites that convert and retain and lots of affiliates like me have made some very nice commissions on sales of memberships in their sites. So why was I so surprised to get an email from them?

Well it seems that Pistol Media is merging with AEBN ... the video on demand people ... and the guys at Pistol Media and AEBN are suggesting that this is the biggest merger to have ever occurred 'in the history of the gay adult industry.'

Yes, as I said at the start, you could have knocked me down with a feather but then in these tough times we're going to see a lot of unusual moves in the adult online industry. At least these two companies are staying in business ... we're sure to see some that won't and a few of those are going to disappear will do so owing their affiliates money.

Privacy
These days privacy is becoming a major concern for people who surf the Net and recently that's been confirmed by a survey of 4000 people conducted by Burst Media. They found that just over 80% of those surveyed were concerned about the privacy of their personal details.

Sadly the adult online industry has never been particularly concerned with privacy ... we tend to leave that to the billing companies who, with a few exceptions, have tended to do a reasonable job in protecting people's information.

On the other hand any personal information that this industry has ever been able to get hold of has been sold ... traded ... recycled and even given away if the person holding the information thought that it was to his or her advantage to do that. Some of the billing companies haven't been slow to push the limits either and many people who have joined a porn site have found that their email address has been used by the billing company to push their own marketing agenda.

Perhaps ... in these tough times ... when people are becoming more and more concerned about their privacy it's time to take a look at the privacy statements that everyone uses and then actually abide by them. Perhaps it's time to be serious about protecting members' privacy ... and that includes their email address.

Instead of trading those email addresses off for a few bucks maybe it's time that we saw it as something of value that we should keep to ourselves. Not only does it have value as a way of pushing some marketing to people who may be interested in buying what we ... and no one else ... is selling but there's a value in that email address because we have protected it and not misused it.

Imagine that ... a paysite owner who not only said that he or she was concerned about privacy and genuinely protected members' email addresses and didn't trade them ... sell them ... or use them to push other products. Think about what might happen if a surfer signed up for a program and knew that he wasn't going to get flooded with a ton of spam.

It might take a while for the message to sink in ... and you might have to write something that sounded genuine about not trading email addresses ... but once the surfer knew that his privacy really was protected when he gave out his personal details to join your site maybe he just might keep on coming back for more.

Maybe he might tell his buddies and maybe that paysite might get a reputation as one that is trustworthy and won't give members' email addresses away. Maybe the value in acting in that way might be an increased number of sales from people who really do value their privacy.

If you run a paysite you won't know until you try it.