Prostitution 2.0: The Oldest Profession Upgrades, Via Facebook

A survey of sex workers in New York City finds that 83% of prostitutes have a Facebook page, which accounted for 25% of their regular clientele in 2008. Five years prior, Facebook didn't even factor into sex workers' business plans, but the shift suggests that streetwalkers are increasingly getting off the street and turning prostitution into something more upscale — even respectable — according to Columbia University ethnographer Sudhir Venkatesh.

Venkatesh's study of prostitution began in 1999, just as then mayor Rudy Giuliani was in the midst of his "quality of life" campaign to make the city more palatable to middle class families, ushering homeless people off the sidewalks and cracking down on offenses like panhandling, jaywalking, squeegeeing and prostitution — especially in the city's seedier locales like Times Square and the Bowery.