* In New York, 83% of prostitutes surveyed in a study respondents who turned to Facebook to attract customers.
* The investigator in charge of the survey ensures that the network will be the main form of recruitment in this area in late 2011.
* The upward trend has been following the elimination of the classified section on the website Craigslist erotic.



The prostitutes use the social networking site Facebook to attract customers. So much so that some recent studies claim that this will be the main way to attract customers at the end of 2011 in cities like New York. The results, although they refer to this great city, could be used to monitor the changing trends in similar locations, that sex workers are doing to grow their business.

After removal of ads Craigslist contacts page, accused of being the largest source of prostitution in the U.S., sociologist at the University of Columbia University Sudhir Venkatesh were focused on the habits of 290 people involved in world of prostitution and 83% of respondents said they used Facebook to attract customers, as reflected this week in Time.

Venkatesh began to study prostitution in the city of New York in 1999, after Mayor Rudolph Giuliani began that same year a campaign to improve the 'quality of life' in the streets, an initiative that sought to end the homeless ', begging and prostitution, among others, and seeking clean areas (especially the more commercial and tourism) of people associated with it. The prostitutes have been found off the street, on the Web, a way to attract many customers, and that was what led to this sociologist to investigate, after seeing several women offered their services and rates in this network.

The trend to attract customers over the Internet began to grow back in 2003, when six of 10 female prostitutes used Craigslist. According to data from surveys Venkatesh, 9% of the clientele, and then, came from this website. Between 2003 and 2008, the proportion of regular customers from Craigslist was reduced from 9% to 3%, while the share of Facebook went from zero to 25%.

In the study, published in Wired, is reflected also the importance that they have a BlackBerry to connect to the Internet constantly, since today is an increase in income.

Venkatesh also said that many business people and entrepreneurs turn to the Web to contract these services to avoid being seen on the street.

Andrew Noyes, a spokeswoman for Facebook, said in the New York Daily News that the network would try to cut any type of illegal activity would take place on websites, something that even for the police, it seems impossible. Paul Browne, police spokesman in New York, said recently that address this type of behavior on the Internet is very complicated.