Taste Networking for Better Porn

Untitled, 1968.
Gerald Gooch. Lithograph.
Collection of The Museum of Sex.

The MoSex Index survey asks you
to rate sample images based on
how much it turns you on (or off).
This helps establish your "taste profile."
View Slideshow (Credit:Wired)

(Editor's note: Some links in this story lead to adult material and are not suitable for viewing at work. All links of this nature will be noted with "NSFW" after them.)

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One frequent theme in my e-mail inbox is "Where can I find good porn?"

If you've written to me, you know that I do try to reply to everyone except the most obvious trolls, even if it takes me a while to get to you. And I answer questions as best I can.

But this is a difficult question to answer. What does "good porn" mean to you, and how much are you willing to pay for it?

Recently, one reader expressed frustration that on the occasions I do link to or recommend adult content, it's not free. "I have followed many of the links I find in your columns, but they all seem to wind up at commercial sites that want my credit card," he writes. "I don't think you want to be a shill for commercial porn, but sometimes I get that feeling."

Of course I am not a shill. I am selective, in that I rarely write about things I don't like unless I just can't keep my trap shut, but to be honest, I don't pay much attention to whether the adult sites I link to are free.

I have neither the time nor the patience to click through gallery after gallery of boring pictures or to sit through a series of low quality 1-minute clips. I'm 35, no longer on a Top Ramen budget, and frankly, what I like was hard to find even in the glory days of free porn.

If I can have a reasonable guarantee that the content I'm buying is what I want it to be, I'm willing to pay for it.

Yet I sympathize with the desire for recommendations from someone you know. Porn, like sex, can get awfully personal. If you feel an affinity for my taste, it's natural to ask me what I like and where to find it.

Daniel Gluck, executive director of the Museum of Sex (NSFW) in New York, sympathizes with the situation as well -- so much so, he's trying to do something about it.

The result is the fledgling MoSex Index (NSFW), an attempt to combine the best of social content with "taste networking."

"Our social content engine is similar to Digg or Reddit, where members can post content and others can rate it. Based on content thresholds, who is doing the rating, karma and reputation, links make it to the homepage," Daniel says.

"But -- and I think this is an extremely important aspect of the project -- we've also incorporated a collaborative filtering element. On other sites, you rate or (don't) rate; we have a degree of rating based on a 7-point Likert scale that adds weight to your like or dislike. We take that intelligence and form 'taste profiles,' which combine to form 'taste networks.' When people in your taste network find content they like, that content gets recommended to you."

The MoSex Index is barely launched, and like any community-based project, its usefulness will depend on the quality and quantity of its membership. So far, the user group has been small, with 70 testers posting links and adding ratings.

"Even with the small group, we're seeing semi-accurate predictions, on a broad scale, of what users might like," Daniel says. "Just with our museum staff, we can see who is most similar to whom. That's one of the aspects that's been most interesting to the staff, seeing whose tastes match."

When you create your MoSex Index user profile, you answer several questions about your sexual orientation, gender and preferences, then rate sexual situations based on how strongly they turn you on or off. Finally, you rate several pictures on how they affect you -- does the pin-up art thrill you or bore you? What about a Hustler photo of an all-female three-way? Or two 1950s male bodybuilders posing nude in a natural landscape?

Source : http://www.wired.com