Well well well, how the turn tables. Tumblr shocked the Internet when it announced it would no longer be allowing pornographic content on the platform which intentionally caused the site to become an empty, desecrated relic. Okay, maybe it wasn’t intentional but the owners definitely managed to run it into the ground with that move. Now news is circulating around that OnlyFans wants to move away from porn content too. However, the situation is a bit different as Tumblr at least did have a few other things to do besides porn. On the contrary, the OnlyFans brand was built almost exclusively upon being the website you go to in order to buy lewd pictures from your favorite boys and girls. So why have they chosen this potential dangerous move after seeing the fallout firsthand?
According to other outlets, the same reason that any company does anything: money. Patreon has said in the past that they’re struggling to keep their business model sustainable. That’s why you hear an article every few weeks from us about how they cracked down on some lewd content creators. Simply taking a small cut from the creators doesn’t seem to be keeping them happy and thus they want to bring in advertisers in order to pick up the slack. This creates a problem as most advertisers don’t want to see their product shown right before MidnightSnacc does a 20 minute strip tease bonus video. So from what I understand OnlyFans is now in the same position where they don’t want their business model to simply be taking a small cut from their creators, which means trying to reduce the popularity and frequency of porn on their site. Not only would this allow them to expand their ad revenue potential, but they want to aim to pull in more celebrities to appease that crowd and bring in additional fans too.
Wait, father and son? OH they started the business...for a second I thought...
The problem is, will anyone give a shit? Cameo has pretty much already established itself as the major player in the “pay money to interact with celebrities with no lewd content” market and I would imagine it’d take a long time for OnlyFans to switch up its reputation to try and compete with that. The whole point of OnlyFans was that it created a unique situation where porn fans could interact with their favorite pornstars, amateur or otherwise. No other service was accomplishing quite the same thing and the enhanced loneliness of the pandemic further served to boost the OnlyFans service usage.
See, I'm more for celebrities having to join in on lewd shit, not making it a pure place for celebrities.
It seems to me like a departure from porn content would immediately slap them in the face as their current user base is unlikely to stick around to receive regular appropriate content, much less pay money for it. I understand the desire to acquire advertisers to offset having to rely on taking money from your creators to survive and grow, however this seems like a choice that could potentially destroy the entire business and not one that I would be willing to make as the CEO. Have you ever used OnlyFans? What do you think about their aim to shift away from porn? Would this be beneficial in the long run with ad money, or a move that cripples the business into a barren wasteland like Tumblr? Conduct business decisions in the comments below!
