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Social Networking Today

Recently, XBIZ World Magazine asked several adult industry operators "is social networking part of your company's marketing efforts?"

Here's what they had to say:

Promoting my business directly through MySpace has not worked out well. We built up over 10,000 friends on a SexToy.com profile but never got any sales. Then MySpace suddenly deleted our account without explanation! My personal site was once deleted also for "adult advertising" simply because I mentioned that I own SexToy.com. MySpace is a great tool for me to communicate with friends and plan parties, and success in my social life does help my business. But as a direct business tool, I don't recommend MySpace for adult companies.
— Dave Levine, SexToy.com

Our company does not offer a product for use by consumers. As such, we do not currently promote via social networking community websites. Conversely, as an online ad sales firm, we provide advertising sales support for a number of adult-themed social networking sites. Overall, this genre of websites has become a significant part of our business.
— Scott Rabinowitz, TrafficDude

Adam & Eve is currently promoting its contract girls with a page at www.MySpace.com/adamevegirls. We feel it has gained Carmen Luvana, Ava Rose and Sophia Lynn additional exposure, and fans seem to enjoy keeping up with their appearances and schedules. It's also a great way for them to encourage fans to vote for them in contests such as www.thefameawards. com. Both Carmen and Ava have their own sites as well, but the MySpace page lets Adam & Eve have some control over the message that's sent out over the web. It's also great for any last-minute updates, photos or announcements.
— Katy Zvolerin, Adam & Eve

Social networking is a neglected opportunity for XR. Our product line naturally attracts curiosity and sparks conversation. Some fetish consumers I've talked to act like they've discovered a lost city of gold when they run into eXtremeRestraints.com. We've yet to mine the current social networks available to take advantage of this market. We plan on expanding into this arena in the future.

It has not been a priority for us in the past. I don't feel that the same opportunities exist for us in social networking than those available to porn sites with a stable of pornstars. Our gags, shackles, and giant dongs can't write to their fan-base like porn stars can. Fetish gear attracts a much smaller focused market, yet a very loyal one.
— Ari Suss, XR

Social networking is an integral part of our marketing efforts and has been greatly successful in Kink.com's plans to expand its brand through both industry and consumer markets. Sites like MySpace, Tribe and xPeeps offer us the ability to develop on a higher level of community focus, because of the ability to communicate with and update individuals that are part of a highly targeted market. With our exponential growth over the past years, we also realized that social networking within the industry was also imperative to this growth. We needed to form partnerships, and relationships with other industry leaders.
— Reena Patel, Kink.com

Our mascot ADL Eddie has a My Space account. He also advertises his MySpace account in his thread signature on various messages. ADL Eddie's MySpace account is just an interesting way of highlighting his personality traits. There's the disco music and then he has a link to the funny "stealth disco" video. The MySpace account is linked to on various message boards from Eddie's signature. I imagine that some people get curious about this Eddie character and then click on the link to check out his My Space account. We get some new affiliates here and there from it.
— Colin Delia, AdultDateLink Networks

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