12 Mar 2008

Penthouse Starts Flogging Shares

Penthouse - do you fancy a slice of that?

It seems that the advancement of Playboy into mainstream culture and into the realms of being one of the mose recognisable brands in the world has become too much for one of its rivals, desperate to catch up.

Penthouse appears desperate to increase its revenue and pay off some debts by floating $250 million worth of shares on the New York Stock Exchange, also in an attempt to boost its online presence.

Recently, they bought the company that owned Adult Friend Finder and have been buying up other web-based porn companies in an attempt to compete with the likes of Playboy online.

If you don't know Adult Friend Finder then you obviously haven't seen many porn sites- their adverts pop up on practically every adult site on the internet, and they are completely unavoidable. I doubt this takeover will make much of a change.

It is refreshing to see them trying to shake things up slightly. Their rival has stood still for decades, knocking out the same old photoshoots with similar-looking models with little or no intention of changing, it seems.

Mind you, why should they? They make a fortune, and they're getting more revenue by the year. And besides, the change in direction by Penthouse hasn't been all that great anyway - do we really need another magazine like Maxim?

Still, if it's the online market they're looking to beat Playboy at then they should be able to succeed here without too much trouble as they already have better sites than Playboy - it should be Hefner's brand that should be looking to change their label.

Posted by Steve 12:15:00