The speed of technological progress seems to increase every day, and when we look back to the way we worked and played just a few years ago, it seems amazing how much has changed. Did you know that this month marks the tenth anniversary of the launch of the iPhone? It’s hard to remember a world without apps, mobile instant messaging and video chat, and all the other everyday things we take for granted today, and yet 10 years ago, none of this was possible. All the new tech has transformed so many areas of life and how we choose to live it, and escorting is no exception. Today we look back at how much technology has changed the London escort scene.
Twenty years ago, internet penetration in the UK was still under 8% of the population, which seems quite astonishing now. As a consequence, back in the prehistoric days of 1997 most London punters could not select an escort by searching Google (which was still 3 years away), escort directories (of which there were just a handful anyway) or internet forums/review sites (even Captain69 only started up in 1999). Instead, escort agencies and the few independent girls would either advertise discreetly on the Yellow Pages, the Daily Sport (which ceased publication in 2011), and of course by posting flyers in London’s red phone boxes.
These flyers of course did not show the real girls, instead displaying pictures of some Page 3 Model, and every day there was a cat-and-mouse game of the local council removing the flyers, only for them to reappear a few minutes later. These days, the fact that everyone on the planet has a smartphone means the red phone boxes themselves are rather redundant, and last we heard, many of them were being converted into pop-up restaurants serving ethnic cuisine, coffee booths, and even libraries. Looking back, 1997 seems to exist to a different age.
Fast forward 10 years to 2007, however, and although none of us had access to these fancy iPhones just yet, we already saw major changes in how customers used technology to find the best London escorts. Thanks to Google, escort directories, review sites and the start of the social networks, it was possible to go home after a hard day’s work, log onto the internet on your desktop or laptop computer, and with a few minutes research, build up a shortlist of the best escort companions in town. No need to thumb through a copy of the Yellow pages to find phone numbers of girls who might have retired months before, and no need to visit a payphone in Trafalgar Square to be presented by a photo of a girl who you knew was not the girl you would meet.
Now you could visit your favourite agency site or directory, select some girls who looked OK, and then head to a review site to see what other punters thought of them. Then you could either call the agency and try to book an appointment for later that day, or put their number in your Nokia and call them once you were in Central London. Then you would try to remember the address and directions of the incall apartment, while referring to a hard copy of the London A-Z to get you there. This process seemed like the height of technological sophistication in 2007, but little did we know just how much easier it would be ten years later.
Here in 2017, the escorting industry has been transformed by the use of smartphones. These days, we don’t need to conduct escort research at home and then travel to the incall location in Central London. Nowadays, we can choose our escort companion on the go, whether we are at work or on the train, use a smartphone app to make a free and encrypted call to the agency, and then if we need we can even call an Uber cab to get there. If we choose to walk, then Google or Apple Maps will ensure we never get lost. The whole process is much easier for both client and reputable provider.
So over the last two decades, we have seen major changes in the way that we find and discover escorts in London and internationally. Which sort of begs the question of what is coming in the future? How will the London escorting market work in the following decades? This is the subject of our article Technology Changes the Way We Discover the Best London Escorts, and we promise you that some of the predictions may well shock you!