Smile, you're on a bar Webcam

(continued from previous page)

It's no wonder. Setting up a Webcam is as easy as visiting a Best Buy and picking out a $129 wireless camera. What's changed in recent years is that most bars and restaurants now have a Web page or are at least wired to the Internet. The cost of bandwidth and the tools to program a Web site are also less expensive, making it easier for companies like Baroptic and Barmigo.

Joseph Salvador, founder of Colorado-based Baroptic, said he thought of the idea three years ago, when he drove an hour from Cape Cod, Mass., to a club in Boston with his girlfriend, only to find that the place was near-empty.

He started the business a year later, selling monthly subscriptions to bars in Boston and Denver, but he recently changed his business model to offer the service free to bar owners, who are typically reluctant to spend the money, anyway. He plans to build a directory of the top 100 bars across the country and sell 10-second video ads that air before the live streams. (He did not disclose how much the video ads would cost.)

If you're a bar owner, would you really want this, if things aren't going so well? Or it could give your employees the sense that they're being watched by you.

--Charles Golvin, principal analyst, Forrester Research

So far, Salvador has Webcams in 15 bars in cities like Denver and Boston, but he has aggressive plans to expand to 200 bars in 15 cities over the next year and a half.

With that in mind, he's looking to fund his company, which is not yet profitable. Last year, two of his Webcams--at Boston's Cask 'n Flagon and Denver's Jackson's Sports Rock--had a face-off during the World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Colorado Rockies. (Salvador's MySpace.com page has more than 4,000 friends.)

"We don't want to have Joe's bar in here. We want the top bars," Salvador said. "We're building a broadcast network where we can play commercials," he said.

"Give it a couple more years, and every single one of these clubs will be using live video, or video in some sense, to promote themselves," he added.

Barseenlive, a directory of bars in Minneapolis, was conceived by three friends who decided at a happy hour that it would be ideal to be able to look up online what the crowd was like at the next bar they wanted to go to. After two years of developing the concept, Barseenlive launched with its first bar in Minneapolis last summer, according to co-founder Jon Elizondeal.

Barseenlive runs a dedicated server for the cameras, which span 14 bars around the area, said co-founder Damian Jelich. The company's servers can support about 100 people watching the Webcams, but when it gets to the low thousands, the stream will cut out, he said.

Not a perfect business

Although it makes money by subscriptions, Barseenlive is not profitable yet. Its customers pay a monthly subscription for use of the Webcams and for a listing on its bar and restaurant directory.

The company would not say how much it charges, but others in the industry say it can cost about $500 a month. Barseenlive also plans to start selling more advertising on the site, next to video feeds. It wouldn't accept ads for other bars, but it would feature alcohol distributors.

It's not a perfect business. Despite lower costs of technology and bandwidth, it can be expensive to scale many Webcams with heavy traffic. It's also not easy for these companies to persuade bar and restaurant owners to sign on to the service when budgets in that business can be tight. Other complaints surround the privacy of patrons or the workers at bars and restaurants.

"If you're a bar owner, would you really want this, if things aren't going so well? Or it could give your employees the sense that they're being watched by you," said Charles Golvin, principal analyst at Forrester Research. He did say he could also see the upside to it.

Bill Ashton, owner of Jersey's, a 6-year-old blue-collar bar in a suburb of St. Paul, Minn., started testing the Web cameras six months ago. He views it as a new form of advertising because traditional print and broadcast aren't working for him as well as the bar's following on MySpace.

"One good thing is that you can't tell who the people are," Ashton said. "You just never know, you don't want to get anyone in trouble being where they're not supposed to."

Bar owners have also expressed concern over the possibility that the liquor board could watch the bar staff from their office, and come in and write tickets. Stranger things have happened.

Newsome said a woman once walked up to the camera bearing a piece of paper with a phone number, then her friend ran over and tackled her. Barmigo also gets e-mails like, "Who was the girl in the red dress last night, what's her e-mail, and can I talk to her?"

[gurfrip]

so.

Unreal what you guys think is news and miss the real news. CNET Editor, get your act together.

www.genusi.com/aboutus.aspx

See USPTO, Globocaster
[[a real virgin of the real story]another one]

[thisisapainintheass]

bar cameras?

Is nothing safe from internet snooping anymore? What is next? Cameras in the rest room?

I think this is a terrible idea! Sleaze on an exponential growth curve!

[iBuzz]

Sounds like a stalker's dream

This has to be one of the dumbest ideas ever. Mark my words... within a year, there will be a story about how someone was raped or murdered in a parking lot because some stalker saw them on a bar web cam. Then, you'll have a public outcry about taking down public web cams. You know it's going to happen. So, why play it out? Just get rid of the cams in bars now.

[ggrs34]

agree

right first time, probably a voyeur's idea in the first place

[CyberWoLfman]

Got more bar cams in my Vidfeed Pavilion. LOL

These guys could only find a few bars, and the most of them are just like mini television commercials, not really live feeds like you'd expect from a webcam. I was very disappointed. In my 3D world, I have about 80 live vidfeeds from all over the world (still picture of the Vidfeed Pavilion before I added another ring from my personal site: cyberwolfman.com/vidfeeds.jpg) including TGI Fridays, the Hard Rock Hotel, a bar in Key West, a cafe on a dock in San Francisco, a pizzeria in Utah, a cafe in Switzerland, an Internet cafe in the philippines, a beach resort in Aruba, and a restaurant in Bali, Indonesia.

Thought about doing something like this myself, a while back, and was asking the people who worked in the bars if they had a webcam for the place, but, decided on the Vidfeed Pavilion instead of putting all that on one page. Even put in some goofy ones like to Lock Ness. ;-)

If these guys can't find more than a few bars to get feeds from they're really not trying . . .

[Mergatroid Mania]

Where I wouldn't go....

I don't go to bars much, but I do go to restaurants.

For sure, I would not go to a restaurant where thousands of strangers could be gawking at me while I'm eating.

You can say goodbye to privacy. With all the cellphone cameras, and now this, where will people be able to go (other than home) to get a little privacy?

I'd hope all restaurants would post a sign you can read BEFORE you sit down and order.

[goomah]

Old news

This is OLD news. There was a bar in Ft.Lauderdale that was doing
this at least 10 years ago. You could call the bartender and have
him move the webcam for you.