Camming on Facebook?

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Friday Feature Photo: Liz Taylor on her Limited Edition Adult Trading Card

Friday Feature Photo: Liz Taylor on her Limited Edition Adult Trading Card

Facebook, the number 1 social network, and Skype, the number 1 VOIP, have gotten in bed together. Mark Zuckerberg announced that Skype was being integrated with Facebook to provide video chat to their users.

Some of my first thoughts were how could this be monetized? Could this be another way for web cam girls to cam with people? Will this open up a whole new market for Facebook cam girls?  Yeah, it might.

The problem will be actually monetizing it. The girls will have to bill their customers separate from the application and will not able to integrate any billing function into the application. However, this will allow you to access more of the Facebook network through a personal profile. The other benefit is that you don’t have to have a Skype account in order to use the application, so for those worried about privacy and registering for skype, it solves that issue.

Though I am sure Zuckerberg did not think about this as a possible usage for the application, I am sure we will see girls using it.

It is easy to use. On profiles you now have a “Call” button at the top of your profile. When you open up a chat window, you will see a video button at the top of the chat window.

When you go to make a call for the first time you will have to download a small plugin. Once the plugin is installed the call will be placed and a window will pop up on your friends screen asking them if they want to accept the call.

The built in privacy features are also good.  Facebook users will not have to set up a Skype account to use the feature. The user API is anonymous, so you will be able to use it independent of a Skype account.

Another cool feature is that the system detects what your browser and operating system is before giving you the plugin. So Facebook was able to ensure that the new app is running smoothly for your system.

Phillip Su, Facebook Engineer, published notes on how the team built the app into the Facebook mainframe to ensure ease of use and privacy.

If you want to get started with video chat on Facebook, you can go here to download the plugin.


Every Friday we do a picture of a hot adult star to feature on our blog. Today is the sexy Lizz Taylor on her Limited Edition Adult Trading Card. You can follow her on Twitter at @LizzxxxTayler. If you want to get her trading card, make sure you check out AdultTradingCardCompany.com or visit them on Twitter at @ATCCompany

Protected Tweets..Protected from Whom?

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twitter bird behind jail baars

I recently went to retweet someone’s post and received a warning:

Warning: This tweet is from a protected user

I was taken aback! This was a porn star. This is someone who is in the public eye. Why on earth would they protect their tweets?

If you are wondering what a protected tweet it, it is essentially a private profile on Twitter. It means that only approved people can see your tweets.

Friday Feature Photo: Adult Trading Card of Chanel Preston

Friday Feature Photo: The beautiful Chanel Preston on her tantalizing limited edition Adult Trading Card

This is fine if you are just a person and you don’t want the bots to get you, or spam. If you tweet content that you don’t want certain people to see. Or if you tweet content that only want certain people to see.

Generally speaking the number one thing people are wanting to protect themselves against is porn spam. But if you are in porn, then you are likely not so worried about that.

Regardless, if you are a website or a porn star or content producer,having protected tweets is counter productive. Your goal is to get people to follow you. Increasing your followers, increasing engagement, improving your business networking opportunities is centered around interactions. If people can’t interact with you, or even see your posts, then what is the point?

Because I am on the “approved” list, I can see this persons tweets. But this tweep just missed a networking opportunity. I was going to retweet something interesting and engaging. Maybe some of my followers would have started following this person, because I facilitated an introduction.

I could have decided to retweet anyway. However, it would only be visible to other people who follow this person. So I abstained.

Re-tweet lost. Networking lost. Opportunity lost. shame.


Chanel Preston is our Friday Feature Photo. She is a super sexxy and provocative XXX star. Her Twitter (@chanelpreston) is filled with fun flirty and provocative tweets as well as great information about what she is up to and her new projects. Make sure you follow her on Twitter. Don’t worry, her tweets are not protected. 😉

You can talk to @ATCCompany about her sexy limited edition trading card!

ICANN opens up TLD Registration- Are you ready for .Sexy?

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Friday Feature Photo Tara Lynn Fox Adult Trading Card

Friday Feature Photo: Tara Lynn Foxx on her limited edition Adult Trading Card

So .XXX is not the only top level domain that is throwing their TLD into the ring. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the organization that oversees TLD’s is opening up registration.

For most people we never think about our TLD, except maybe when you are registering a new web address (URL). In the adult industry, with all the hullaballoo about .XXX, I think it is safe to say that TLD’s have become a common topic of conversation. Whether you are for or against it, .XXX is making people think about the importance of their web address real estate.

.Com is the prime real estate on the internet. It is such prime real estate that most people assume you are a dot com. If you don’t have the prime domain then you might  be sending web traffic to the site that does own your dot com.

Every once in a while a site like GoDaddy.com will try to convince us that a TLD like .CO will be the next .com. This is more a marketing push to get people to register .co instead of, or even in addition to, a .com. Of course there are other issues with .co, like people thinking it is a typo or mis-remembering it as .com. To date, dot XXX is the only alternative TLD to gain traction as a plausible dot com replacement.

Despite dot com continuing to dominate website naming conventions, a few have managed to worm their way in. The TLD .me is one that is gaining popularity as it gets incorporated into URLs and in certain ways become phrases, like tungle.me a calendar and meeting scheduling website. “Hey, just tungle.me” is becoming a phrase people are starting to hear. Show.me is a real estate social network.

Another TLD that has made a splash is .ly. You might be wondering what sites use that. Well, how about Bit.ly. This is the number one website used for shortening web urls for social sharing. Almost every adult star and adult website will be familiar, and have likely used, Bit.ly at some point in their social marketing ventures.

So despite the overwhelming cost ($184,000) to submit a new TLD to ICANN, do not be surprised if you start seeing some interesting ones out there like .you or .whatever or .sexy. They may not overtake .com but will any of them get traction? Or will dot XXX be the only top TLD to cause a stir?


Tara Lynn Foxx is this weeks Friday Feature Photo. Make sure you chat her up on Twitter @taralynnfoxx. She is a great gal to tweet with. Not only will she keep you up to date with her appearance and updates to her site, but she might get a little flirty in her tweets with you. I love a good flirty tweet!

Hit up the Adult Trading Card Company to learn how to get a card like hers! Follow them on Twitter @ATCCompany

4 Mobile Twitter Apps, 1 Winner!

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Friday Feature Photo: Teagan Presley's Adult Trading Card

Friday Feature Photo: The amazingly sexy Teagan Presley

Adult conferences are going on all year. You might be going to consumer shows or business to business. But if you are going to the shows and you are on Twitter then you know the importance, and frustration, of mobile Twitter apps.  When you are at the shows you need to be able to easily tweet pics and updates. You need to be able to talk to the fans who are tweeting you and generally manage your Twitter account. The last thing you want to worry about it if your mobile Twitter app is going to work.

So now take this problem and multiply it by multiple accounts and you have my problem.  Though some people only have one account, there are many of us out there who tweet from multiple accounts. Sometimes they might be clients we work for, or brands and stars that we manage. Some might be various stars who have multiple Twitter accounts for different purposes of their public brand strategy.

Regardless of managing one or many Twitter accounts, you need to have an mobile app that works well.

TwitBird Pro

Do you have a mobile Twitter app that you like? why?

I may have found a new favorite mobile Twitter app. For most people they only tweet from one account. So using something like the Twitter mobile or Hootsuite works just fine. I am what you would call a power user. I tweet from roughly a dozen twitter accounts. How do I keep up with it all? Well, that is a different conversation. Because I am a power user I need an app that can keep up with me while I keep up with the Joneses.

Hootsuite Mobile

I was using this for a while. Their UI (user interface) was the most preferable. It was easy to go between account, add lists and searches, keep track of mentions, DMs and Retweets. But I was limited to 5 accounts. Beyond that I find the core account management of Hootsuite to be very limiting for a team.

So this was not sufficient for my needs.

Twitter Mobile

Um, yeah. This one was incredibly limited. It made retweeting really difficult as it was not allowing quoted retweets. A quoted retweet is where you comment on a tweet before you retweet it. ie. Funny! @funnyman my cat is nuts! See her eat almonds The Funny! would be the quoted retweet part. As I rarely retweet without a comment to promote engagement, this was an issue. Oh yeah, you can only tweet from one account. It is not a hub for multiple accounts.

No go.

Tweetdeck Mobile

I love Tweetdeck. They are likely my favorite Twitter manager for multiple accounts. You are not limited to the number of accounts you use. You can easily manage and monitor lists, DMs, mentions, retweets and searches. You can do quoted retweets. In their mobile they even had an extra special column that listed all the mentions from all your accounts in one panel. Love it! …except that it crashed all the time and I had to reinstall it 5 times over the course of one conference weekend. I also found their UI to be great on my laptop and really difficult to manage on my mobile devise. #Fail

Summary

I have tried others and they all roughly had the same core issues.

  • Don’t manage multiple accounts
  • Don’t do quoted retweets
  • Crash
  • Bad UI making it very cumbersome to use.
  • Slow

The Winner

TwitBird

I have recently started using TwitBird. They have a free and a pro version. The pro cost $2.99 and can manage up to 16 accounts. The free version manages 2. The UI is more like Hootsuite, except it is categorized by account, making it easier to keep track of what is happening in that account. So far (fingers are crossed) it is able to handle the multiple accounts without crashing and without being confusing. I can easily send quoted retweets and it is super easy to add people to lists.

Overall, if you only have one Twitter profile or manage multiple, I would highly recommend this app.


Teagan Presley is this weeks Friday Feature Photo. Her limited edition Adult Trading Card is incredibly sexy. I first came to know Teagan as MsTeagan on Twitter. She is an avid tweetie who is great at convo, shares good multi-media content and talks about everything from tv shows to her sexy projects.

Follow Teagan at @MsTeagan

Follow Adult Trading Card Company to see the hottest new cards at @ATCCompany

Is Your Twitter Feed Dead?

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Is your Twitter feed dead? Do you have little to no activity? Is no one talking to you? Maybe it is time to look at how you have been managing your Twitter.

Adult Trading Card: Mary Cary

Feature Friday Photo: The sexy classic beauty, Mary Cary

The basic formula to Twitter is pretty easy. If you talk to people they will talk to you. Depending on the kind of feed you have, this can become more challenging. In the adult industry a lot of feeds will be viewed as spam, especially if you are not an adult star. If you are a content provider or website, then many people will just write you off. Part of this is because there has been a precedence established that many content websites primarily use Twitter for spam.

The best way to overcome this is to actually talk to people.

  • Talk to you followers
  • Retweet their tweets
  • Respond to tweets
  • Mention people in your tweets

Talking to people and retweeting content is the best way to breath life into your Twitter feed. Usually when a feed is dead it is because of infrequent posting. Twitter is not a sprint, it is a marathon. You have to tweet daily. Beyond that you have to tweet multiple times a day.  The more active you are the more active Twitter will be with you.

Retweeting is not just a good way to spark conversation but it is a good business tool.

A great example of someone who is doing a great job with engagement is our beautiful Friday Feature Photo, Mary Carey. She has very active conversations with a lot of different people. Her twitter feed is dominated by mentions, showing that not only is she engaging with other people, but people are engaging with her too.

If you want to breath life back into your Twitter feed, start talking to people.


Mary Carey is the Feature Friday Photo with her Limited Edition Adult Trading Card.  Make sure you go and talk to this sexy blonde on her Twitter at @RealMaryCarey and talk to @ACTCompany to get more sexy trading cards!

The Reluctant Pornstar

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Elli Nude

Friday Feature Photo: The Sexy Canadian Red-Head, Elli from Ellinude.com

I recently came across an interesting blog, The Reluctant Pornstar. As you can imagine, I was immediately intrigued.  I wondered if it was a blog by a pornstar chronicling her journey through porn, or maybe someone who did erotic photography and was being stigmatized. Perhaps it was a feminist blog about the objectification of women?  What I immediately loved was that I did not know what to expect. What the blog does demonstrate is the power of a good title.

Branding is everything. You can make or break your business and career through it. What this brand made me do was dive into her site so I could learn more.

I discovered that Elli, the Reluctant Pornstar herself, is an adult star. Though, as she will be the first to tell you, she does not identify as one. She has a website that features photos, videos, and webcam of her engaging in sexual acts. Though they mirror a lot of the traditional amateur porn sites, Elli has set herself apart by her non-porn activity.  Besides blogging, she also posts photo essays about everyday life, gardening tips and cooking videos (well, there are also erotic stories).

I have spoken about the importance of being yourself in your branding. Your personality is your biggest asset, and Elli has created a great franchise based around hers.  She is sexy and flirty, a little geeky, witty and generally playful.

Elli NudeSome examples of her reluctant pornstar side, and some of my favorite parts of her website, are her playful videos, like “Flip and Squish Eggs” or “Morning Bum”. I think I like that one because it is so distinctly Canadian.

Elli’s blogs range from everyday life in Vancouver to sexy videos and some of her more salacious exploits. Regardless of the content, they are all distinctly her.

She became the Friday Feature because I wanted to give you an example of how being yourself can be integral to the creation of your personal branding. Elli is able to attract a wide audience because her branding is so unique. The blog allows her to capture both an Adult, and non-adult audience.  Why would you want to capture an audience not looking for Adult content?  Well, if someone likes your blog, and they know that you produce adult content, there is a chance that they will be curious about it. You are more likely to get a longer term subscriber if you capture them with more than just a sexy vid or provocative picture.  If they like YOU then you become the substance behind your product.

Make sure you check out Ellinude.com and follow Eli on Twitter @ElliGirl

Who you are can make you famous!

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Adult Star and pro-wrestler April Hunter

Feature Friday Photo: The sexy and delectable April Hunter

These days, with everyone who has an Internet connection going online and being content creators, it is getting harder and harder for adult stars to set themselves apart. Finding a niche is vital to separating yourself from the crowd. If there were a magic formula to this, everyone would do it. The trick is to look inside yourself and find that thing that sets you apart and then essentially exploit it.

Finding your thing is the key to success in everything. You have to find what you are good at and then run with it.  The hardest part is committing to it, and taking the time to build your skills and proficiency in your natural talent.

In certain ways the Internet makes it easy to make yourself seem unique and different. A nice website, some good photography and a good copy editor and you can create the illusion of an interesting persona. However, social media busts this personal mythos.

When you use social media, you are actually talking to people. So even if you try to maintain an inventive personality, at some point your real self comes out.  Finding a niche that separates you from the pack needs to come from you.

Many people think this means you need to have a special skill or talent. But this is not true; a niche can be anything from the talkative sweet girl-next-door type whose main skill is chatting you up on Twitter, to the dominatrix who will only talk to you if you say please.  It can truly be anything, but make sure that it is really you.

This week’s Friday Photo features April Hunter.  She has found a niche that is true to herself and is blowing it up!  I was originally going to write a post about the power of YouTube for non-viral video marketing. But now you will have to wait until Monday to read that post. April inspired me to write about the importance of being true to yourself and distinguishing yourself through your own personal niche.

Adult star and pro-wrestler April Hunter

April has created a dynamic career based on her interests. Starting off as a dancer, she realized this was not enough; it wasn’t bringing her the career satisfaction or potential advancement she wanted. So she got into fitness modeling, then became a pro-wrestler.  Now as an adult star, she is all of it and more!

On Twitter she is a great tweep to chat with. Her content is funny and engaging. She shares great pics from her life, and is also really easy to talk to. Her site really shows her passions and her specialty.

In short, April has done an exceptional job of turning her interest into her niche and that niche into a career.

Make sure you visit April’s website: www.aprilhunter.com and chat her up on Twitter @AprilHunter

The takeaway: To set yourself apart, you need to be yourself.

Adult Classifieds get a new venue!

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Friday Feature Photo: Kyle King

Friday Feature Photo: The sexy Hot House Exclusive star, Kyle King

The adult ad section on Craigslist caused a big scandal in the United States. Craigslist received a lot of flack for their adult ads.  The “Craigslist Killer” was reported to have trolled the personal ads to find his next victim.  Despite intense scrutiny and a very public lambasting, Craigslist was not particularly interested in removing this section. In fact, the law sided with Craigslist. According to first amendment lawyer Doug Mirell, “The Communications Decency Act says that essentially those who are simply providing a bulletin board by which others can post their content is not going to be liable for the content itself.” When people cried out about moral responsibility, or about the site being used to facilitate human trafficking, the site reminded people that Craigslist had actively helped authorities track down people engaging in human trafficking. In the end, their adult/erotic section was removed.

Many people asked, “Where are adult ads going to go, now that they are gone from Craigslist?”  Duttslist has answered that question.  It is a site that is set up like Craigslist, following the same style of user interface. They have made no secret of their adult ad section, in fact they feature it; in their “Hottest Ads” section, you will see the most popular of their adult ads.  They also offer more traditional community ads, making the classifieds site robust like Craigslist. but they are catering to the adult industry.

Duttslist is a two-person operation. Mike is the owner and Jen is the media consultant. Their most popular city is Toronto, but they are quickly spreading into major US cities.  Active on Twitter, various message boards and escort review boards, Duttslist is actively promoting their site as the new source for adult classifieds.

Their promotions are working because they are averaging over 200,000 page views a day, with more than 15,000 unique daily visitors, and it just keeps growing. They offer three different levels of ads, from the free classifieds to sponsored ads.  Though they are not competing with Craigslist, since Craigslist no longer offers an erotic services section, they are raising some eyebrows over there, because they did receive a cease and desist from them.

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that the adult industry was looking for a good adult classified site and Duttslist answered their call.  Make sure you check out their site and visit them on Twitter


Friday Feature Photo: Kyle KingThe amazingly sexy Kyle King is this weeks Friday Feature Photo. I met him at the Phoenix Forum this past weekend, and was immediately captivated. Obviously he is incredibly good looking with a body I could eat sushi off. But he is also a really nice guy.  I had a number of wonderful conversations with him.  Kyle is a Hot House exclusive, and has starred in a number of great Hot House movies. He also has a blog where he shares his thoughts and pictures from his travels, talks about his life and presents some exclusive sexy pics.

Make sure you check out Kyle’s Blog

Find him on Hot House

And chat with him on Twitter @KyleKingxxx

 

15 Tips to a Tip Top Twitter

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Twitter is one of the strongest tools in social media for the Adult Industry.  You can essentially post what you want,

Feature Friday Photo: Seth Gamble

Feature Friday Photo: the very sexy and talented Seth Gamble.

without fear of being deleted. You can network with people any time of day or night and every audience is to be found, from fans to B2B. This means that your Twitter needs to be working for you and not against you.

Having a strong Twitter bio is important. This is your first impression – your first chance to get someone to like you. This is also how search engines find your profile, so you want to make sure it is SEO optimized.

Once a week I go through my new Twitter followers and decide who I am going to follow back.  I consider a lot of factors in deciding why I follow or don’t follow someone.  One of the biggest reasons is their bio on Twitter.

Think of your bio as your 10 second elevator pitch. You have 160 characters to tell me why I should be interested in you.  If I like what I see, maybe I’ll click your profile and check out your most recent posts.  If those are interesting then I’ll follow you.  But the bio is your handshake.

5 Tips for a strong Twitter Bio:

  1. Tell me who you are. Are you a public figure? What do you do? Why are you here? I want to know who I am following
  2. Web Address: if you have a website, put the url in your bio.
  3. Don’t be crass or abrasive.  If you seem unfriendly and rude, why would I follow you?
  4. Don’t try to sell me.  If your bio is trying to push a product, that tells me you are about your sales and not about engaging with your followers.
  5. Be charming. Be nice. I want to think that if I follow you, you are approachable.

5 Tips to optimize your Twitter Bio

  1. Putting your web address in the bio is an easy way to have your Twitter associated with your business in the search engines.
  2. Use industry key words in your bio. Do some keyword research and make sure to use some of the big ones. That way, when people use them in a search you have a chance of coming up in the results.
  3. If your name is branded, use your name, so when people search your name they will find you.
  4. Don’t shorten any words.  Search engines don’t search for abbreviations. So unless your key term is usually abbreviated, spell it out.
  5. If you have a long URL for your website, use a Bit.ly to shorten it.

5 Ways to make me think you are a spammer

  1. Sending an auto-DM like, “Are u fun?” This is just spam.
  2. Using a validating service like TrueTwit. You are not preventing spam, you are creating it.
  3. DMing me the same message over and over…
  4. Tagging me in a post to a random link. If you post a link that says nothing but the link and my name..wham, bam, spam!
  5. If your avatar is an egg, I will think you are a spammer even if you are not.  Put in a pic.

Feature Friday Photo: Seth Gamble This week’s Feature Friday Photo is the very sexy Seth Gamble.  I would like to say I was captivated by his beautiful blue eyes or his amazing body but I was drawn in by his Twitter. Seth set him self apart on Twitter because he was so genuine and approachable. This boosts his star power exponentially.   He says that “well-behaved people rarely make history….life is a gamble…I’m all in.” Seth is also a very talented actor and has appeared in a ton of movies. Make sure you check out his films and follow him on Twitter.

Visit him on Twitter @sethgamblexxx

View his acting bio

Seth a big supporter of Hot Rawks, an injected aphrodisiac made from raw organic superfoods and herbs.