Girls, tech sex and dating

Well almost. On Weds 11th of Feb in the very nice Lyst studios in Hoxton Square, Girls in Tech London held an event about Dating, Sex and Technology.

Oddly it was a packed out event (not just Girls in Tech, but sex and dating too) and there was a good smattering of men in the audience (as well as one of the panelists).

Girls in Tech was started in San Francisco in 2007 and now there are over 60 chapters around the world with thousands of members. It's aim is the promotion, growth and success of female entrepreneurs, innovators and technologists. Tech start-ups tend to be male dominated and though there are a growing number of females they are quite often hidden in the swathe of their male counterparts. It's also encouraging that although it's female focussed men are encouraged to attend and also take part in the panels (though it is a requirement that females are on them too). As well as the larger evening events, there are also more intimate (if that's the right word) smaller breakfast roundtables too which tend to focus on specific topics.

The panel was moderated by Radhika Sanghani who writes for the Telegraph and is the author of Virgin, a book about the effect apps are having on our behaviours and experiences, and what the future might hold for dating tools.

The panelists were: -

• Barbara Galiza from Dattch (a lesbian and bisexual/bicurious dating app)
• Hatty Kingsley-Miller from Antidate (men are visible in the app, while women aren't and have to make the first move)
• Marie Cosnard from Happn (Hyperlocal app which allows member sto find each other if they've crossed paths but not met)
• Dimo Trifonov from 3nder (every sexuality is the norm and anyone can find people with the same interests)

It was an interesting panel it definitely shows that 'sex sells', however (IMHO) it also showed that some sites hadn't a clue about monetisation which can be a huge problem when growing and suddenly infrastructure costs overwhelm the company.

All in all a very enjoyable evening and definitely worth another visit to the next event.

Virgin announce Addict tariff

Virgin's addict tariff is aimed at the mobile Internet user who needs to get their daily fix of social media sites.

£20 gives the user unlimited texts and unlimited data and 10p per minute for phone calls.

It's not quite as good as it sounds though as unlimited of course isn't unlimited as it's 1GB per month for data and 3,000 texts per month - though ignoring the data that means an SMS cost of 1.5p per text (though that's sending 100 texts per day - could be cheap for sending bulk SMS via lots of SIMs).

If a cheaper top-up tariff is chosen i.e. £15/m then there's 600 free texts and for £10/m it's 300 free texts with Internet costing 30p per day limited to 25MB.

It's also worth noting that file sharing and video or voice over Internet calls are not allowed.

Though £20 per month isn't bad for 3,000 text messages and 1GB Internet per month though there are better data deals on other networks.