Hi, Cisco...
Wow... It's so nice to be chatting politely with you...
No, I haven't heard of any adult site that is going public. I can't imagine that anyone would want to do this, since an adult site is a relatively low startup cost. For about $5,000, you can start one. Invest $100,000, and you can have a seriously smoking site. Why bring in investors to help? A $1 million site isn't ten times better than a $100,000 site. Just wouldn't make much sense... And if the investors are needed to start a company which builds multiple adult sites... Well, that doesn't make much sense either, since you could build one site which could, within weeks, be generating enough of an income to fuel the buliding of another.
So I don't know... Doesn't make sense to me, but if you want a real investment, build one yourself. I have 19.
I don't know about the "30%" of hits that you quoted, but I can tell you that the largest adult sites are bigger than Microsoft, Yahoo, Alta Vista, or any of the others that you would expect to be huge. I can also tell you that more than 80% of last years' electronic commerce was adult oriented, so it's where the money is online. By far. The next big money item online is travel services, at 1.6%. There is no question where the technology is and where the money injection is coming from which is spurring Internet growth. And let's face it... While the material may be debatable, it definitely is doing wonders online. Don't forget that since pornographic material is all binary (meaning that it's pictures, sound files, and movies), the latest technology is always focused on getting large amounts of data to the user quickly. Thus, the next time you log onto a T1, ISDN, DSL, or cable modem, remember that the reason people are looking for speed is so that they can get their pictures faster.
Thanks to the porn biz...
You know, if you are truly looking for an investment but not looking to start your own site, you might want to look at Shockwave Flash. In my personal opinion, I think that this is the next big step in what's going to be common on the Internet. I am not sure if they are publicly traded...