New Delhi, February 08: Even before Craigslist removed its controversial adult services section last year, adult service providers were swiftly moving on to a new online destination to attract clients – Facebook.
According to a research conducted by Sudhir Venkatesh, a professor of Sociology at Columbia University, 83 per cent of prostitutes he interacted with, have a page on Facebook. The findings were published in the February 2011 edition of Wired.
Venkatesh estimates that by the end of the year Facebook will also emerge as the leading online recruitment space for sex workers.
In 2008, as much as 25 per cent of prostitutes’ regular clients came via Facebook. This figure is expected to be much higher for recent years.
Sex workers are also known to carry two phones and have a preference for BlackBerry smartphones with 70 per cent owning one. The iPhone is the distant second favourite with 19 per cent using the Apple phone.
——–Agencies