With the March 2008 monthly release the Picticon exceeds one million words of content--1,050,624 to be exact. And that is one million unique words of substance--and does not include propositions, articles and several hundred other short words that are eliminated from the Picticon search thesaurus. Picticon is published by Edge Interactive Publishing Inc., of New York.
In the almost six years since its debut in May of 2002, the Picticon has grown at a rate of around 200,000 words per year. For all the people who don't read, those 200,000 words have supported a growth of 36,000 pictures and videos spread across 1000 photos sets per year. With one photo or video set per page, the Picticon's 1,050,624 words are spread across 6397 pages and 206,047 pictures and video clips.
According to Picticon writer Kathy Hayes words in the Picticon play several important roles. "Words begin in the backend content management databases that support the Picticon and all our other retail and wholesale products. There are over 60 fields of data in the content management system for each scene, including information which is not distributed such as compliance data. Depending upon the product, different fields are gathered up and formatted onto a web page. The most important of these include descriptions of the costumes and actions, along with physical descriptions of the model, such as hair color and age."
The Picticon also employs a several hundred word keyword thesaurus that is used both internally to select scenes as well as for search engine optimization. The keywords provide the basis to produce the Picticon Category Pages, which provide a pre-sorted collection of over 150 unique niches.
"Words are important because they provide textual descriptions of each scene. We use both Google sitemaps as well as an internal search engine," explains Hayes. "But words are also important because they embellish each scene with a story. The pictures tell a story and visa-versa, the story helps put the pictures into a context. Because so much of the Picticon involves niches, or fetishes, or vintage material, the story helps snap out details that the eye might otherwise pass over. Sexuality is both a sensual and intellectual activity."
"Picticon is not a site that is just about words," Hayes concludes, "it is first and foremost a site about ideas, and in media terms it is mostly about pictures and videos, although navigation and words do play an important role. It's easy to do the math--there are about 35 pictures or clips and 160 words in each scene. No surfer clicks up all the thumbs or reads all the words; our goal is to provide them a supersaturated environment that engages them."
Click here to go directly to the Picticon internal search engine, or type "picticon search" into Google:
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