Sexist app draws the ire of TechCrunch audience

TechCrunch co-editors Alexia Tsotsis and Eric Eldon have been forced to issue an apology to their readers after two controversial presentations took to the stage during TechCrunch Disrupt, the publication's annual technology conference.

"This app is called Titstare. Bringing a social networking edge to ogling breasts," writes @kkjordan

Popular technology news website TechCrunch is in damage control as social media continues to slam the publication for allowing two inappropriate presentations to take to the stage at its yearly conference.

TechCrunch Disrupt is an annual technology conference hosted in San Francisco, New York City and Beijing, and has previously attracted high-profile speakers such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

But a presentation by Australian duo Jethro Batts and David Boulton has attracted criticism that sexism and objectification is rampant in the technology sector.

The pair took to the stage to unveil 'Titstare', a 'joke' application that provides a real-time feed of pictures of men staring at women's cleavage.

While the app was received with applause, there were many professional developers in the crowd, including women, who were unimpressed. Many took to social media to express their criticisms using the hashtag #titstare.

Some audience members, who brought children to the event, were less than impressed.

Another hacker presented an application called 'Circle Shake', a game designed to record how many times you can shake your phone handset in 10 seconds. But when it came to demonstrating the app, the crowd was stunned to see the hacker begin to groan and simulate masturbation.

As the online backlash continued, TechCrunch co-editors Alexia Tsotsis and Eric Eldon issued were forced to issue an apology on the website:

Normally our hackathons are a showcase for developers of all stripes to create and share something cool. But earlier today, the spirit of our event was marred by two misogynistic presentations.

Sexism is a major problem in the tech industry, and we’ve worked hard to counteract it in our coverage and in our own hiring.

Today’s issues resulted from a failure to properly screen our hackathons for inappropriate content ahead of time, and establish clear guidelines for these submissions.

Trust us, that changed as soon as we saw what happened at our show. Every presentation is getting a thorough screening from this hackathon onward. Any type of sexism or other discriminatory and/or derogatory speech will not be allowed.

You expect more from us and we expect more from ourselves. We are sorry.

The publication has drawn heavy criticism for an apparent lack of screening process, and Ms Tsotsis and Mr Eldon are understood to be "figuring out what happened."