Penthouse buys up sexy social network

THEY SAY SEX sells and, in this case, it's sex itself that has been sold. Penthouse, the name synonymous with magazine-based smut, has gotten itself a large chunk of the online adult dating market by purchasing Adultfriendfinder.com for a reported half a billion dollars.

Various Inc, which owns the site - and promotes it as "The world's largest sex and swinger personal community" - also has a number of other dating sites that are rather less salacious, including MillionaireMate, for those looking for a sugar daddy, JewishFriendFinder, which does what it says on the tin, and even BigChurch, for God-followers looking for a little more earthly temptation.

Over the years, AFF has evolved from a fairly basic personals site to a cutting edge social network, rolling out Facebook-like features well before Zuckerberg's titan latched onto them. Members can communicate via video as well as text, and the AFF platform also integrates member blogging and a sprinkling of AJAX here and there.

Various has proved that there is money to be had from social networking - albeit in the sex sector, and not quite at the scale of Facebook. Interestingly enough, the Penthouse deal values each of Various' 260 million users at just under $2 each - as opposed to Facebook's recent $15 billion valuation, which puts each one of its 19 million users at $13, six times as high.

Various recently settled a spat with the FCC over its use of pop-up ads on its site, which was almost certainly a pre-condition of the Penthouse buyout.

Is this the beginning of the social networking bubble? Or rather the beginning of the end? µ