As the world of Web 2.0 nears the limit of its bubble, websites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube still give adult industry professionals access to the largest audience possible, but they're not very porn-friendly.
All three sites prohibit adult content, but the more important rule is that they also prohibit external links to adult content. That might make promoting a site tricky, but it's still possible.
On her MySpace page, adult performer Vicky Vette includes no nude pictures or links to her site, which she only mentions by name indirectly.
Adult performer Nikki Benz follows a similar strategy with her online promotions. Benz maintains a MySpace page, a Facebook profile, a blog and a YouTube channel. On none of these web pages does she include any content that would explore the boundary of an R-rating in a movie.
"As for anything 'inappropriate' on my page, I don't have any nude pictures of me — only glamour shots, and those are always PG-13," she told XBIZ. "You have to [follow the rules] on those sites. You have to have some kind of responsibility for what you upload."
Constant vigilance is required for any adult professionals who choose to promote themselves, because mainstream sites will often move the goalposts on them with little or no warning.
Facebook recently joined with MySpace to tighten age verification requirements. The Facebook move in particular put adult professionals on notice, because new rules on the site included language that said the site would remove "inappropriate content," though they didn't specify what that meant.
Document-sharing website Scribd.com also recently changed its terms of service to ban adult content entirely. Scribd had previously attempted to relegate porn to a special section on its site.
But not every mainstream outlet is hostile to adult content. Link-sharing giant Fark.com maintains a popular adult link repository at Foobies.com.
Social bookmarking website Reddit.com has dedicated an entire section to links that are not safe for work. The popular link site also recently offered its platform to the open-source community, and an adults-only clone, Fuddit.com, has already popped up. To download the Reddit source code, visit Reddit.com.
Video-sharing site DailyMotion.com offers a section for adult content.
On the adult side of the equation, xPeeps.com has emerged as a popular networking site for industry professionals and fans, while XBIZ sibling site XFANZ has built its networking base entirely on fans and performers.
There are dozens of YouTube-style video-sharing sites, but industry professionals are often dubious of this outlet. An informal survey of adult producers indicated that they'd like to se tube-style sites used as a platform for previews of full scenes and DVDs, and not as a smorgasbord of free content. YouPorn.com and RedTube.com have emerged as early leaders in this arena.
Micro-blogging website Twitter.com has inspired an adult counterpart in Boobik.com, which for some reason eschewed the more obvious name of Titter.com.
Social bookmarking is gaining a foothold in adult, as X-Digg.com and SmutPost.com have both found audiences. SocialPorn.com, by contrast, was defunct as of this writing.
Another site that employs a variety of Web 2.0 tools is Sin20.com, which features a tag cloud, social bookmarking and its own widget.
BackLinxxx.com offers webmasters a social-bookmarking widget that combines popular mainstream link-sharing sites with the latest adult alternatives.
But what about the next iteration of the Internet? To date, no one trend has claimed the mantle of Web 3.0, but one possible contender is a site like FriendFeed.com, which aggregate information from multiple social-networking sites.
That said, while it may still be too early to tell, tracking the growth of the Internet will always hold interest and present pitfalls.
