Porn star Satine Phoenix has a personal message for you. Well, you and 2,779 other people.
"I'm going for wild ’70s bush," she declared to her many Twitter fans one evening not too long ago. She was making merkins — pubic wigs.
In a word: hot.
Jiggly Poof, meanwhile, was "snuggling with my teddies in bed." And over in Miami, Sinnamon Love was getting ready for her second tattoo of the day: "Want to watch me live???"
These porn stars have plenty of company. Porn people of all types — directors, stars, producers, and webmasters — are using Twitter to communicate with fans.
It's a powerful form of media with huge potential for outreach. "How often can a person write something, post a picture, or ask a question and receive a handful, a dozen, or hundreds of thousands of responses in minutes?" asks Ari Herzog, an online media strategist. "The adult entertainment industry is no different than any other industry: The purpose of business is to sell something. If a Twitterer can reach just one person, and that one person can tell others, then that's a virus you want."
But does everyone really need to know if a famous star is having a ham sandwich for lunch? Do online users want to get hourly updates — the director's cut of Shaving Ryan's Privates is now online! — or just hear from you once or twice a day?
Good questions. And we've got some good answers.
First, some basics.
Twitter is a social networking service, which puts it in the same category as Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace. But it's different, and you'd be smart to understand its special potential and limitations.
Here's how it works. You sign up and then start sending out "tweets" — short messages with no more than 140 characters. Unless you "lock" your account, anyone can visit the Twitter website and read your tweet; some people will choose to "follow" you so they get your messages automatically. You can also "follow" other people.
So what should you say in these messages?
Here are some no-no’s: Don't spam people with tons of links. Don't tell them boring details about your lives (unless they're sexy). And don't treat all of Twitterworld as one giant gob of people instead of many individuals with individual needs.
"If you want to be successful you will need to get to know your followers on a more personal level, respond to their replies and direct messages with personal messages," said Peter Housley, CEO of Naughty Tweet LLC. "The stars that are really making this work spend hours a day actually communicating with their followers, not just sending out messages like, 'I'm on Cam RIGHT NOW' or 'I'll be Feature Dancing at XXX Club Tonite.'"
Marie Luv, Belladonna, and Jayla Starr are examples of stars who tweet hundreds of times a day with sincere quotes and photos, Housley said. (Yes, you can post photos through a service called Twitpic.)
Porn star Stoya told a social media consultant in an interview that, “Since ‘fans’ find me on these social networking sites and talk to me, I talk back. It would be rude not to."
And what about webmasters? What should they do with Twitter?
Housley said webmasters operating solo-girl sites should get the girls on Twitter. "Big network sites need to find unique ways to provide user interaction through Twitter. We've seen some interesting attempts so far like Pink Visual tweeting during a shoot, but I think there is a lot of room yet to go."
Lisa Weinberger, CEO of the online marketing firm Pearly Writes, said webmasters should be careful about spamming Twitter followers with constant links.
"If you are coming to Twitter to grow your network and drive traffic to your site or blog, you need to make connections, and yes, making connections takes time," she said. "You can create a community of specific followers and market your tweets toward your community, but the biggest thing is interact. Just tweeting 'noise' will get you nowhere."
Another bit of advice, courtesy of Housley: "Don't fall for the 'We'll get you 10,000 followers in 10 days' schemes. They don't work."
If you jump on the Twitter train, check out the various types of software that are available, many of them for free. Some of the experts interviewed for this story recommended Tweetdeck, and it's my personal favorite. It helps you broadcast tweets and track incoming messages while also keeping an eye on Facebook; you can even send messages to both Facebook and Twitter at once.
If you follow hundreds or thousands of people, Tweetdeck can help you create "groups" of people you actually care about, meaning you don't have to read all the messages from everyone else.
Other recommended Twitter tools include Twhirl, HootSuite, and Twellow, along with Splitweet, Monniter, and TweetLater. Sites like yfrog.can host your photos.
You can also find Twitter programs for iPhones and Blackberries.
This article originally appeared in the July 2009 issue of AVN Online. To subscribe, visit AVNMediaNetwork.com/subscribe
