Scoping out the bar scene
While standing in Stout Brothers Irish Pub in Santa Rosa on Thursday, Jeff Bodean, left, and Peter Viviani display a live video feed of the same bar on an iPhone.
KENT PORTER/ PDPublished: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 4:03 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 4:03 a.m.
Here's the situation: It's Friday night. You've had a grueling week and are looking to unwind.
Do you (a) go to a mellow bar where you can drink a cocktail in peace and avoid long lines, or (b) find the most crowded spot in Santa Rosa to dance and let the week's frustrations drip out of every sweaty pore?
Whether you choose (a) or (b), a local company has designed a Web site and iPhone application that streams live video from inside Sonoma County bars to help you decide what scene best suits your mood.
Its Web site, Barspace.tv, displays video feeds from Web cams placed above bars or next to dance floors, giving viewers a real-time preview of how the night is unfolding.
"Our generation wants to know what it's like before they go out," said co-founder Peter Viviani, a 29-year-old Sonoma State graduate. "They expect information now, in real time."
Viviani and Michael Deignan started the company in 2008 after meeting in a SSU marketing club. The pair launched the site in March, and they have recently attracted the involvement of a major software developer in Santa Rosa and a Bay Area investor.
"It's a great idea. It sells itself," said Jeff Bodean, founder of Santa Rosa-based Micromat, which developed the leading fix-it software for Apple computers.
Bodean developed Barspace's iPhone application, which launched in September. The application lets people use their phone to quickly flip through the live feeds and determine where to go next.
"Now you can be out at a bar, decide it's no longer cool, and use your phone to search for the happening spot," Bodean said.
In return for developing the application, Bodean became co-owner and chief technology officer of the company.
Together, the three are now working on a new version of the Web site, which they expect to launch in a few weeks. It will increase the social networking features and allow bars to more easily control online promotions and event calendars.
Cameron Thieriot, an heir to the San Francisco Chronicle fortune, invested $50,000 in the startup, Viviani said.
The company's business model is still evolving, but includes selling Web cam services to bars, revenue from the iPhone application and advertising dollars.
It costs the company about $250 for each Web cam. It originally paid about $700 for each one, but Bodean designed a way to use cheaper cameras. That has allowed the company to charge bars considerably less for installation -- or sometimes nothing at all.
The company doesn't currently charge a monthly service fee, but Viviani expects this will be part of its future revenue as it expands outside of Sonoma County.
The iPhone application costs $10 -- considerably more than most programs designed for the mobile device. But Bodean, who is a nightlife regular in Sonoma County, thinks people will be willing to pay the price to have the go-to information on what bar has the best scene.
Not everyone agrees. Jesse Newsome spent nearly three years trying to launch a similar Web cam service for bars in Phoenix, but eventually pulled the plug on www.Barmigo.com in late 2007.
"We had about 18 cams up in Phoenix," Newsome said. "It's a great market. It's a great idea. But we realized very quickly, bars weren't willing to pay for it."
Barmigo charged bars $500 a month for the service and included clients such as Alice Cooperstown, which is the bar owned by rock star Alice Cooper.
Newsome, who now develops iPhone applications for an education company, doesn't think Apple's mobile device makes the venture any more feasible.
"People won't pay $10 for an iPhone app," he said. "And if they're going to charge for it, they'll need to get every bar in town online."
Barspace.tv is not close to having every Sonoma County bar online -- it has 10 in the county and two in San Francisco -- but it is making a good impression on some bar owners.
"It's the ideal of target marketing," said Jeremy Crone, co-owner of Stout Brothers in Santa Rosa. "Anyone who is on Barspace wants to go to a bar."
Stout Brothers, which is a downtown hot spot on weekends, could offer drink specials on a slow night through the Web site, the iPhone application or even text messages, Crone said.
"It could create a totally different dynamic for bars," he said.
The Web cam in Stout Brothers lets people peer down on the bar area, getting a sense of how busy the restaurant is.
When Crone is standing behind the bar, he has received messages from far-away friends.
"I get texts all the time saying, 'Wave,' " he said. "It's a great novelty, maybe the best out there for bars now."
The Web cams do raise concerns about privacy.
"It's totally creepy," said Gabrielle Russell, a bartender at The Cantina in Santa Rosa. "Every time I hear about it, it's about a boyfriend or girlfriend spying on each other."
She has also been creeped out by men who came to the bar because they saw her on the Web cam, she said.
Both Viviani and Bodean stressed that the cameras are not intended to monitor people, but rather the number of people.
"The only problems we ever run into are the whole spy cam thing. So we intentionally degrade the quality of the video feed," Bodean said. "It's not so much a spy device. It's meant to be a crowd counter."
Viviani said he is looking into technology that would blur people's faces.
In Minneapolis on Monday night, Megan Huseby could be seen walking in front of a bar cam at Sally's Saloon and Eatery -- a campus bar next to the University of Minnesota. Huseby, an assistant manager, said she wasn't bothered that anyone in the world could be watching her.
"People could be taking pics or video anyway and posting it on Facebook," she said. "It's really the same thing."
The Sally's Web cam is run by www.barseenlive.com, a Minneapolis-based competitor of Barspace.
Viviani said he knows competition is heating up, and they plan to begin an aggressive growth campaign.
"We're going to try and hit all of California in the next year," he said. "We want to go national and international eventually."
The iPhone application has made those prospects all the more plausible, Viviani said.
"It's so much fun to use, and once you start using it, you'll wonder what you did before it," he said.
You can reach Staff Writer Nathan Halverson at 521-5494 or nathan.halverson@
pressdemocrat.com.
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