How and why the porn industry embraced Twitter

Washington: After having charmed revolutionaries during the Arab spring uprising as an effective tool of communication, Twitter now appears to have caught the fancy of porn stars who are using it for personal branding through direct interaction with fans.

Once relegated to sleazy red-light districts and the darker corners of the internet, porn stars are now gaining following in a surprising place: Twitter, CNN reported.

According to Dan Miller, managing editor of XBiz, an adult industry trade publication, the social media site has opened up fan bases for these porn stars "like nothing the adult film industry has ever seen before".

"Since most mainstream pop culture publications don't cover the porn industry (and) porn movie reviews don't generally appear alongside reviews of big Hollywood movies," says Miller, "the adult industry has embraced Twitter."

It is "a way to reach out directly to fans beyond the typical porn consumer".

Miller estimates that about 90 per cent of the porn performers are on Twitter. He says today it is essential for new performers to use social media effectively to promote themselves and build their "brand".

Alexander Raymond Palumbo was one of the first executives in the adult entertainment business to embrace social media, first on Friendster, then Myspace and now on Twitter.

"Via our social media platforms like Twitter, I'm trying to establish brand loyalty, like people have for a company like Disney," said Palumbo, a social media strategist at Digital Playground, an adult movie production company.

He holds seminars for adult movie actors, helping them set up their accounts and guiding them on how to tweet in a manner which can connect them to their audience.

Chauntelle Tibbals, a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California who studies the porn industry, also thinks social media is profoundly changing the porn business.

Successful performers on Twitter are those who open themselves up and share parts of their non-professional life with fans. "That kind of interaction is something you don't see mainstream celebrities doing to the same degree," according to Tibbals.

Many of the performers are surprisingly funny, smart and engaging on Twitter.

"You are seeing a different kind of relationship that a viewer has with a porn performer," Tibbals added.