Las Vegas Weekly

Keeping up with porn stars

Porn Star Tweet lets you connect with the stars of the industry—figuratively, of course

One hundred forty characters isn’t much to make a personal connection with the world, but millions keep trying—some of them porn stars.

On November 3, @jennajameson wrote: “Been a crap ass week … tito is gone :( Been working here and there, and raising very sick babies alone. SO HARD!!!!!”

On November 9, @stormydaniels wrote: “@tommyiswild Whatever makes you feel better about yourself … whore!”

Social networking draws in millions every day, from MySpace to Facebook to Twitter to countless other social-networking sites. But 10 months ago, one local company found a way to use social networking and porn stars, two very popular topics, to build a business: Porn Star Tweet.

Porn Star Tweet is an aggregation website that lists every porn-star tweet, picture or video posted on Twitter. It gives enthusiasts a quick, easy way to check in with their favorite porn stars, and it drives traffic to the stars’ social-networking sites.

Additionally, Porn Star Tweet hosts weekly “Tweet-Ups” at The Velvet Lion Gentlemen’s Club. Every Thursday, the company brings in a different porn star to co-host and party with its followers at the club’s Intimate Porn Star Encounter night.

A recent Encounter hostess was Heather Vahn, a Vegas-based porn performer who’s been in the business nearly two years and joined Twitter just six months ago. “Twitter changed my life,” Vahn said. “Porn Star Tweet puts you out there and promotes your name.”

Photo: Tom Donoghue / www.donoghuephotography.com

2009 AVN Awards co-hostess Jenna Haze.

When the site launched, only 17 porn stars were on Twitter, among them Stoya, Jenna Haze and Joanna Angel. Now Porn Star Tweet catalogs 507 porn stars and has a following of more than 50,000. “These numbers are striking in the social-networking space,” said Pete Housley, owner and creator of Porn Star Tweet. “And we really had no clue what we were getting into when we built it.”

Today, he and his two employees, Alyss Heart and Simone Peters, operate eight sites under the Naughty Tweet Network, including ALT Girl Tweet, BBW Girl Tweet, Web Girl Tweet, Gay Star Tweet, Glam Girl Tweet and Porn Exec Tweet. They also launched Comedy Tweet, the second most successful site in the portfolio.

“Across our network, we reach about 50,000 people every time we tweet,” Housley said. “We also have a really strong following on Facebook and a mediocre following on MySpace. … We also integrate with Flickr, YouTube, pretty much anything social. You can bet your ass we’re plugged in.”

Porn Star Tweet is thriving due in part to its personal approach to social networking.

“Porn Star Tweet owes most of its success to having Alyss Heart drive the product, because she’s the face or the tweet, if you will, behind the whole system. She is the person they identify with,” Housley said. “Porn Star Tweet has far, far, far more followers than Alyss Heart, but she herself has around 6,000-7,000 followers. So it’s about personal attention: reading the tweets and seeing what’s going on with people and tweeting in context. Blasting messages is just wrong.”

This personal approach is the main reason people interact on Twitter rather than clicking on a pornography site. “Social networking is about people spending time on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace that aren’t getting that social interaction out of life, so they’re using those as outlets to meet friends,” Housley explained. “People don’t have to leave their house to become socialized, and they feel like they know these people now. They feel like they know Alyss Heart, and they feel like they know these girls.”

“I’m a Twitter junkie, so everyone knows exactly what I’m doing, and I’m a Twitpic junkie too, so everyone can see what I’m doing. My followers know me,” Vahn said. “I tell them to click on this link to see me, and a lot of people do.”