Barspace Blog

July bars 2010

July was a cool month because it was our first test of Southern Cal.  we started in Santa Barbara and then moved further south to San Diego.

Santa Barbara is awesome.  Seriously, we had an absolute blast.  Our first meeting in town was at The James Joyce.  They signed up and we never looked back.  Each day we added another awesome bar one by one until we finally left with 10 on infamous State Street.

Along the way was the really fun part.  Each night we zoned in on market research aka ‘barhopping’  and got to know a lot of cool people and enjoy the city.  Our favorite day happened to be a Saturday which coincided with US vs. Ghana world cup match and a summer parade/beer garden/shit show called Solstice.  Talk about a party.  Thanks to our boys at Union Ale and O’Malleys we were sufficiently inebriated for all the festivities.. good times.

San Diego.  From PB to Gaslamp San Diego is the place to be! Awesome weather and killer bars are a great combination.  Not to mention a killer disc golf course in Balboa Park.  Disc golf is turning into our teams favorite rec. sport, its a lot of fun.

Back to business.  We got started with Hennessey’s then Gaslamp Tavern then the Verant Group bars like Tavern at the Beach, Sandbar, West Coast, Offshore and Brewleys.  After Mike went back Peter and company signed up even more accounts.  As of today in three weeks we signed up 15.  A good start with lots more work to do!

Quick plug to the Races at Del Mar.  That was a lot of fun, a cool experience to see the horses cross the finish line so close.  Not so cool how terrible service was.. hard to find the group, but overall a cool day.

Alright.. thats a brief recap of July 2010 at Barspace.tv

Scotch, on the rocks, with webcam

May 3, 11:19 AMSF Technology ExaminerMark Albertson

Peter Viviani was hanging out with friends one Saturday night planning to hit the bars in downtown Sonoma, CA. His problem was that the bar action in Sonoma can be real hit or miss, even on a Saturday night. Presto…Barspace.tv was born.

The concept is amazingly simple. If you’re thinking of going to a bar, find it on a website, check out the live webcam, and decide for yourself. After all, you don’t want to go strolling in only to find five crusty old guys nursing Bud longnecks and watching reruns of “The Price Is Right.”

Viviani launched Barspace.tv in March of 2009 as a project for his business marketing class at Sonoma State. He got a good grade and some investment funding to boot.

“I’ve always been an idea guy,” says Viviani. “I wanted to create a kind of one-stop shop for all of a bar’s marketing needs.”

So far, the website has attracted close to 50 bars, all in the greater Bay Area. Every bar who participates posts signs so that customers know they may be on candid camera and the hours the webcam will be on. Timing is tricky and the bar owners have control. Though some bars keep their cams on all day, most won’t “go live” until 9 or 10 p.m. in the evening when the action really heats up.

The webcams don’t transmit in full streaming so the patrons can’t be seen as clearly, which may in fact be a good thing. Asked if there were any problems with customers getting a little wilder or crazier than usual in front of the cameras, Viviani replies “I thought that may occur, but we haven’t seen it yet.”

For bar owners, the service isn’t free but the price is reasonable. The set up costs $699 and there’s a $149 per month fee. Viviani’s website provides bars with outreach tools to customers including texts, vouchers for drink specials, and plenty of photos that highlight the atmosphere and food.

Viviani is pondering his next moves which may include expansion outside of the Bay Area and launching an iPhone application to draw in bar-seekers on the go. He’s already got some potential investors interested in additional funding. In the uncertain world of technology startups, Viviani has cleared one hurdle in proving that his site can attract bar owners and viewers. Says the Barspace.tv founder, “There’s still a lot of cool stuff we can do.” Stay tuned.

http://www.examiner.com/x-27653-SF-Technology-Examiner~y2010m5d3-Scotch-on-the-rocks-with-webcam

Wanna win a Wii??

Barspace has just announced a video contest with the grand prize being a Nintendo Wii. All you have to do is submit a short video of why you love barspace or how you use it.

After submitting your video here:  http://bit.ly/nintendoWiiContest share your video all over the internet to get people to rate your post.

The video with the most amount of views and highest rating will win the grand prize.  2nd and 3rd prizes will go out to the runner up!

Prizes:

1) Nintendo Wii

2) RedRum Gift Set

3) Jameson Gift Set

May the best video win!!

Darsha Philips reports for Fox 40 News in Sacramento on Barspace.tv.  I thought the report was edited beautifully and really gave a great depiction of barspace.  Brad Barmore of Tex Wasabi’s gave a great testimonial and Peter added some helpful points.   They cut out my interview completely, lol

Sac is up and running and we can’t wait to add more bars soon!

Britt Carlson of NBC Action News does a great segment on Barspace’s recent expansion into Chico, CA.  While showing off the website and the iphone app she interviews Barspace’s marketing director, Mike Deignan and Bella’s Sports Pub owner, Josh Marks.

A really well done piece and a special thanks to Britt, our chico venues and chico users!

Peter Viviani and Jeff Bodean

Scoping out the Bar Scene

By Nathan Halverson

The Press Democrat

(click the pic to read the full article)

This was a really cool article and created alot of  buzz about the site and the iphone app.  Last Friday we ran a promo and gave away the app downloads for free.  The result was awesome as 1,200 people downloaded the app.  That night while in downtown Santa Rosa I saw two guys using the app to find their next bar, it was a pretty fulfilling moment for me.

Thank you everyone for your support and continued use of barspace.  We’re partiers just like you and strive to make a site that like minded people will use and enjoy.

Thanks!

-mike

Hey everybody,

So we’ve begun our expansion into the city!  Our first club is brand new called Siberia.  This place is pumpin with volume.. their sound system is state of the art and engineered by Dolby Digital Surround Sound.  Guaranteed to have you feelin the beats from head to toe!

Siberia is the first of many SF venues to come and were super stoked to be working with them.  Check out there venue when you get a chance.  Its located at 314 11th St. between Folsom and Harrison.  See you there!

Full Moon Madness – 5/6/09

One night doing every single thing we can think of

By Suzanne Daly, Gretchen Giles, Gabe Meline, P. Joseph Potocki, Lindsay Pyle and Hannah Smith

10:15pm: Barspace.TV

“This is so freaking weird. I can see someone getting a tequila shot!”

“Dude, is that Michelle? It totally looks like her.”

“Oh, my God, that’s so funny. She would be there. I can’t tell if that’s her, but that bar is so dead. Let’s go somewhere else.”

Finding the place to be on a Friday night is hit or miss. The solution is to stalk local bars through hidden web cams. Seriously. Barspace.tv has 360-degree live views of such popular Sonoma County bars as Friar Tucks, Tex Wasabi’s, the Cantina, the Yacht Club, Stir and others. These views have a zoom-in feature, in case the eye is drawn to a certain fine-looking bargoer, and usually are on all weekend from 9pm to 1am.

OK, so it’s been said that the cameras don’t have facial recognition technology, but still it’s a little creepy. Then again, it does give us a way to distinguish the off-the-hook places from the lame. Bars can also put coupons up on their page for things like $3 Jägerbombs or can text site users about impromptu deals. A website that gives drink specials, the ability to see how many people are at a bar from a computer and is as sketch as the guilty pleasure of Facebook stalking? Probably the most genius creeper site ever. —H.S.

So, we just found this article today (Full Moon Madness – 5/6/09 North Bay Bohemian), but as you can see its quite old.  Not a bad insert into a very popular socializers news source, the Bohemian.  One thing they misstated was that our cams can zoom.  This is false, there is no zoom on the live cams.  Other than that tho, some pretty funny stuff. I like how they compare us to Facebook stalking and I quote “Probably the most genius creeper site ever.”  That’s hilarious.. and as you know our intention is to to creep or spy.. merely to give socializers a leg up on the most cracking parties.

Thanks for reading.  Check in soon and follow the link below to see the full article.

-mike-

Most recently we’ve added new California places to the site: McNear’s Saloon in Petaluma, The Vine in Santa Rosa and two new live cam locations at Stout Brothers in Santa Rosa and Finnegan’s Marin in Novato. By adding Finnegan’s we have expanded our reach out of Sonoma County into Marin County and very soon will venture into San Francisco! Can’t Wait!

Along with adding new venues to help you all find the hottest parties and deals we’ve also been busy adding new functions to the site. As you may or may not know were in the middle of a complete redesign which were hoping you’ll love as much as we do!

One of our most interesting experiences is the SMS announcements functionality. Our venues can send them out alerting of great parties and drink specials. Recently we added a new feature that limits the hours to which these texts can be sent. We apologize for anyone disturbed by a late text recently and assure you we worked hard to stop this. From now on texts can only be sent between the hours of 10am and 11pm.

Thanks for reading. See you at Happy Hour!

Mike

Huge thanks to RedRum for providing great cocktails all night long yesterday in Petaluma!  RedRum Punches and Voodoo Cokes go down extra smooth because of the added fun and island flair.