Bar-scene app tells you what's hopping
On the eve of my daughter's graduation from the University of Wisconsin-Madison last weekend, she took her parents to her favorite bar, knowing how proud we are of her. And knowing we were paying.
Her plan was to lose us oldsters later in the evening and celebrate with friends, so she was checking out other watering holes in town on her smartphone. I was amazed to see this app showing how busy these places were at that moment, the male-female ratio and the average age.
Now I know how the app does it, and it's giving some people the creeps.
It's called SceneTap, and Madison is the first Wisconsin city where it's available. The free app's creators say Milwaukee may join later this year. It started in Chicago last July and spread to San Francisco and a half dozen college towns, including Austin, Texas, where the company is based.
Cameras at the door count people going in and out, and they use facial detection technology to calculate the gender and age of each person from facial features and measurements. The information for each venue is updated every 15 minutes.
"It's not 100% perfect. It's plus or minus 3 to 5 years in either direction with about 90% accuracy. That's better than you or I could do if were just guessing," SceneTap spokesman Andrew Cross in Chicago told me.
Privacy-conscious bloggers and tweeters in San Francisco found this unsettling and threatened to boycott bars with SceneTap, which led to an open letter to the city this week from company founder Cole Harper.
"Here's the thing," he wrote. "There are no videos or images stored at any time. Once the data is triggered, the images are overwritten, deleted, gone. There are no tapes. There is no video feed either. No one can go to www.scenetap.com and see what is happening. It's all data and numbers - that's it.
"And since we're only focused on the door, you're free to do keg stands and dance like Bernie or hit on that bartender all you want. We do not track you in the venue."
The bar's security cameras will do that. Experts say we're being caught on camera dozens of times a day in the city, so I don't find myself getting too riled about this app, though we are taking the company at its word that it's not up to anything evil.
Since last month, seven bars in Madison are using SceneTap to size up the crowd and to lure people in with drink and food specials. Adam Allister, manager at Wando's on University Ave., said the bars are getting a free trial and then will pay a monthly fee for the service. SceneTap provides the cameras and crunches the numbers. The bars are supposed to post a notice letting customers know the software is in use.
"In Madison, you've got to do everything you can to stay competitive," Allister said.
No one at his bar has complained about being photographically detected at the door. Same at Kollege Klub on Lake St., where manager Sam Ziegler tells me he hasn't heard anyone discussing the app at all.
When I called Ziegler around 6 p.m. Wednesday, SceneTap was reporting Kollege Club to be under 20% full. He was surprised it also said the crowd was 39% female and 61% male, all in their low to mid-20s. At that moment, there was one middle-aged male customer in the bar.
I refreshed the app, and now it was saying 56% female. But it was still just the same dude. "I think it's just making up numbers now," Ziegler said.
One of the things I learned about SceneTap is that a bar can request that the reported percentage of males max out at 72%, even if the crowd is all or nearly all guys. This is done to avoid discouraging potential customers of either gender, Cross said.
So it's not perfect and above board, but it can at least give some indication of the makeup of the crowd, especially for anyone using the bar as a pick-app joint.