What’s in the app store for our love lives these days, and is technology making finding one another easier or sleazier?

Girls in Tech invited the people behind London’s popular dating apps to consider these questions at our February panel event at Lyst Studios in Hoxton Square, Shoreditch.

Dating, Sex & Tech brought a full room of over 150 guys and gals to listen to the founders and directors of successful dating apps 3nder, Happn, Antidate, and Dattch.

Moderated by Radhika Sanghani, the panel shared amusing insights into our dating behaviours. Data from across the apps pulled out similarities in behaviour, with highest interaction levels at evenings and weekends, notably Sunday evenings. In the visually-driven world of engagement, girls are very selective, while boys are less so, then filter potential parters out based on their successful matches.

Is love (or lust) a swipe away? It depends. 3nder, for example, created an un-matching rule if there had been no communication after three days between two matched accounts, pushing a model not aimed at instant gratification and limitless chat between random strangers, but at following up and acting on your desires. As 3nder founder, Dimo explains: “I want people to meet in real life. I want something to happen between people”.

Marie from Happn insisted that the Happn app fixess a real life painful experience: you meet someone you are attracted to, and you miss the chance to talk to them. Happn registers all users you cross paths with during the day, so you’ll never have to ask that gorgeous blonde on the tube her number anymore, just wait for her to become a match. Which makes us think, should we spend more time at Waitrose instead of Tesco? It might improve the quality and attractiveness of the Happn feed.

So who downloads and uses these apps? Everyone! Even men download and try to use Dattch, the lesbian app. “5% of downloads are made by men. We have a system to recognise when that happens via social logins or asking for a proof of picture with ‘I love Dattch’ written on their hands.”

As for 3nder obviously, it is a little more of a niche so to speak – and Dimo, the app’s founder with over 300,000 users, says that it serves a large market of open-minded people. “People using my apps are often thanking me. They are people that used Tinder or other dating apps and for whom the experience wasn’t so great. My app is straightforward, so there is no surprise for users at both ends.”

On the other hand, Antidate, an app that gives all the power to women to pick who they want, might attract women fed up with being constantly pinged or those looking for a little more privacy and less exposure. The two young women who founded the app last July will hopefully tell us their discoveries in the coming months.

We were delighted to see many attendees stay after the event to network and talk to the panelists, as well as numerous people downloading the apps during the event and afterward.

The event generated lots of great questions on twitter and from the attendees as well, such as “What’s the business model of your apps?!” “Do you think you can retain users, because it’s easy to opt in and out of your apps. The instant gratification feeling can last only a moment…”

Girls in Tech team member, Alessia, took glam pictures on the night that you can all find on her Flickr among other GIT events. On our end, we wrote 5 take-aways that we found interesting to share and have added the write-ups of our lovely blogger attendees – because they were too good not to.

A HUGE thank you to our partners; our host LYST for their stunning gallery space, LY London for taking care of our PR and MOO for their continued sponsorship and for the takeaway booklets (which have a cheeky discount code on the back for our members).

We hope you enjoyed the event, please send feedback and any requests for future events to gitlondon@gmail.com.

Wishing you a happy St Valentines everyday,

Love,

@josephinegoube from GIT