SuicideGirls and Playboy.com join forces

posted by Jeff | Friday, February 13, 2004, 12:25 PM | comments: 3
The end is at hand. I saw this article on CNN money about SuicideGirls and Playboy.com joining forces to cross market themselves.

If you've been playing along at home, Stephanie and I were members there for about a year or so, up until last December. We let the subscription expire in part because the direction of the site and its owners were getting too far away from what we thuoght made the site special.

SG has naked girls, and that's a good thing. Not like porno naked, but tasteful naked. No fucking, insertions or penis action. The girls are all alt/goth/emo/punk or whatever, so most have piercings and tattoos, or at the very least cool hair. All are natural too, and a few easily make my cutest-girls-on-the-planet list.

We did notice however that the owners, and even some of the girls, were being real assholes to members, the very people who keep them (the owners) out of day jobs. It's certainly their right to do so, but in some cases it was ridiculous. If someone has a billing problem and the owners give them shit about asking, that's a problem. I understand when they smack people around for spamming their forum or name calling, but billing is all business. You don't screw around there.

I have to admit, I'm somewhat jealous of their success. For one, I wish I would've thought about it first. I mean, shit, I was doing the same thing they were years ago with online communities sans the nudies. The second is that their success was totally accidental, and they've made a lot of insanely stupid business decisions. For example, at one point early in their growth spurt, where more and more people were joining, they dropped prices. Call me crazy, but isn't that basic supply and demand?

So now they're hooking up with Playboy. Dare I say that's going to be bad for their business. It adds credibility for them with the mainstream, but the mainstream is the very thing they've tried not to be, and I wonder if that will sit well with their audience. Worse, if they get the frat boy types suddenly joining the site, the community will most certainly go to hell.

I shouldn't hate on them, but I hope they're careful about the way they handle success. It can all go away just as fast as it came.


Comments

freeze

February 13, 2004, 6:05 PM # Aren't the suicide girls coming to Cleveland?

Jeff

February 13, 2004, 6:24 PM # I think their burlesque show is, yeah. That's another thing that kind of kills the aura. If these girls are all of a sudden "celebrities," it kind of ruins the fantasy that they're girls you would know in real life, or even hook up with.

Who knew that something that showed less would be so popular.

Stephanie

February 14, 2004, 1:04 AM # Huh...oh well. The site is run by a bunch of morons and I certainly hope this means impending doom for them (even if that makes me sound bitchy). Some of the girls are genuinely cute and nice, but for the majority of others it's overdone and way out-of-control.

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