BP's Natural Progression a la Craigslist
The nature of BP is changing. In order to understand the shift in BP, you need to look at the progression of the industry. The internet has significantly affected the quality of escorts by allowing a lower class of escort to reach a greater number of people through inexpensive advertising and providing escorts with a means to completely reinvent themselves.
In the past, to find escorts one would either have to go to a stroll, a strip club, a casino, a bar / club frequented by escorts, or to an ADVERTISEMENT (I. E. Newspaper). Although all are working girls, some working girls are of better quality than others: Some escorts will only escort at a casino or club, but will never go to the strip, whereas others will never advertise but will escort out of a strip club.
The quality of the women on the stroll, strip club, casino, bar / club, have not changed. However, the type and nature of women that sell themselves via Advertisements have changed, since the advent of self-posting internet sites, I. E. BP.
In the past. The only advertising was via newspaper / periodicals. It took planning and forethought for to advertise in a newspaper. A proof had to be prepared and submitted before hand, and because of the investment in the newspaper ad, escorts that traveled tended to stay in one place longer (remember, I'm talking about those that advertised via newspaper). Moreover, there was no Voice Over IP (VOIP) , so effort was needed to change a telephone number and cellular phones were a luxury item for the very wealthy / businessman. As such, escorts had land lines and those that advertised were either affiliated with different agencies, long term local escorts, or escorts that intended to stay a sufficient period of time to make the print ad work. As such, transients did not usually engage in the advertisement mode of finding dates, and they stuck to in-person methods (strolls, clubs, casinos, etc.).
Now. The Internet allows ANYONE to post an advertisement, with no forethought, planning, or investment in the locale. This means that the street walker, strip club working girl, down on her luck bar fly, casino escort, and traditionally print advertisement escort, all are bundled up in the same place. However, there is a fundamental difference between a street walker and a casino working girl, both in service, work ethic, and quality (usually). Moreover, VOIP, disposable phones, G-Voice, etc, make it easy for an escort to move location to location, change numbers, and completely shed ANY trace of her previous self, particularly if she uses fake pictures. This allows escorts to have not investment in their craft or the community that they service because their reputation will NEVER follow them.
Backpage's Problem – BP has no filter. When BP was first getting started w / escorts, most of the lower end escorts were using Craigslist. There were no double and triple posts by the same provider during the same day, etc. (at least none that I observed when BP first became somewhat popular for escorts). Quality escorts were on BP, and they chose not to post on Craigslist, due to the same reason why many escorts are no longer posting on BP now – because there is no filter to exclude lower quality / fly-by-night escorts. BP is now a hodgepodge of sex workers from all walks / genre of whoredom and all levels of quality. In essence, the same thing that is BP's biggest benefit, is its biggest detriment: The fact that anyone can post (you can find something new and fresh, I. E, the opportunistic / first time working girl new to escorting that just decided to post because she was down on her luck; and the used up escort that can no longer get dates in person because she is too unappealing).
Just my two cents.
