For more than a decade, the site commonly referred to as RedBook served as a vast catalog of carnal services, a mashup of Craigslist, Yelp, and Usenet where sex workers and hundreds of thousands of their customers could connect, converse, and make arrangements for commercial sex. RedBook tapped into the persistent, age-old, bottomless appetite for prostitution and made it safer and more civilized. The site was efficient, well stocked, and probably too successful for its own good.

Launched in 1999 by a Mountain View, California, tech entrepreneur named Eric "Red" Omuro, RedBook began as a modest hub for mongers (Internet slang for johns) to discuss the local scene and post reviews of escorts. As it grew, the site expanded beyond the Bay Area, adding sections for Southern California, the Central Coast, Phoenix, Nevada, and the Pacific Northwest. Omuro also added a key functionality—he made it possible for sex workers to advertise their services.

RedBook may have been full of racy talk and the promise of erotic assignations, but the site itself was anything but sexy. Its ugly, bare-bones design was straight out of the early 2000s. It resembled a web page you might use to find a new job or a secondhand bike. If you were careful to stay away from the sections where photos automatically displayed, you could easily browse potential sex partners at work and your coworkers would never suspect a thing.