Fancy finding a Playboy Playmate in your e-mail everyday? You're in luck. PC home Online (網路家庭) and King's International Multimedia Co (協和國際多媒體) announced yesterday that they will jointly provide a paid service whereby pictures of naked Asian women from the pages of the internationally famed magazine are e-mailed to subscribers everyday.
Starting on July 26, subscribers to PC Home's ePaper Web site who choose to purchase the service will be e-mailed every weekday at least one image of a Playmate and short articles and jokes from the pages of the Chinese-language version of Playboy magazine.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
According to Lee Ming-tze (
"We provide the premium content, they provide the vehicle," said Lee, who added that it is a profit-sharing agreement.
"We split the profits," he said.
Arthur Lee (李宏麟), chief executive of PC Home, who launched the service yesterday in Taipei, said that "many companies were profiting from online pornographic images and gambling ... [and] if the content is good demand will be strong."
Lee said that choosing to partner with internationally recognized Playboy meant that subscribers would be provided with the best possible content.
"Sex is a basic human need and the Internet is a popular delivery device for it," said Lee, who, citing ePaper's 1.4 million subscribers, was sure the project would be a money maker.
Lee said it was too difficult to forecast demand growth with the new business model, saying only that it was the "right direction for the company."
According to PC Home, it is the goal of the company to launch between five and 10 new fee-based online papers every month.
PC Home's track record on Internet projects has been varied with the February closure of the Chinese-language site Tomorrow Times (
Lee is hoping that the content of the Playboy e-mail service will prove more slightly more alluring. According to a survey conducted by Netvalue Taiwan earlier this year, local Web surfers spend more time visiting porn sites than any other type of site on the Internet.
For Lee of King's International, the profit-sharing project between PC home project is the first step of taking Playboy to the Web in Taiwan.
"We already distribute Playboy magazine and videos in Taiwan ... now is the right time to go into the Internet business," Lee said.
Lee said the level of success of his latest Internet project will determine the speed and extent to which a full-fee Web site is developed in the future.
Despite the massive volume of free pornographic material already available on the Web, Lee is hopeful that the quality of Playboy images along with the bundling of the articles and jokes will attract subscribers.
At the very least, at an introductory price of NT$499 for six months or NT$699 for a year, it will be considerably cheaper than the print edition, which is NT$3,100 for an annual subscription.
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