The Bay Side area of Silicon Valley attracts crowds of successful entrepreneurs to settle down, owing to its close proximity to a concentrated cluster of hyper-successful tech companies, which have redefined the game of modern commerce. And boy, do sex workers like this neighbourhood. A flurry of sex workers have flocked to the area, zeroed in on the high concentration of socially awkward young men with higher than average incomes.

Karen*, a sex worker in the area who charges $500 an hour said, “It seems like a lot of out-of-town providers come into town to work in the Valley.”

Some local sex workers use novelty t-shirts to advertise their services. Josephine* for example wears t-shirts with prints including “Winter is Coming” and “Geeks Make Better Lovers” to attract the tech savvy and highly paid engineers and programmers. Josephine says that she’s “trying to communicate to them that I understand a little bit what it’s like to be techy, nerdy, geeky.”

Kitty Stryker rents her time for a minimum of $350 an hour, but during the day she’s a social media marketer for a local startup, and claims that everything she has learnt everything she needs to know about social media marketing via her “trade.”

Everything I know about social media marketing I learned doing sex work. Currently I’m using Hootsuite a lot; I’m using Klout a little bit. I also use Twitter calendar, which is just this simple free thing, but it’s got very interesting analytics data.

According San Jose Police Department’s Sgt Kyle Oki, “business is good out here.” “These girls say they can make more money here than in other cities.” The growth in the industry according to Oki, is driven by technology, with sex workers setting up websites, and using smartphones arrange discreet transactions.

Local sex workers even use smartphones to accept credit cards for payments. Square, created by Jack Dorsey, is a credit card reader accessory for smartphones, aimed at the small to medium business owner market.

*Names has been changed to protect identity.

[Source: CNN Money, YouTube]