Students will soon be able to check out Gainesville bars and clubs without leaving their apartments with an extension of an app made for barhopping.
SceneTap LLC, a Texas-based social-networking company, will add information about seven Gainesville bars and clubs to its free nightlife app Tuesday.
The app will include The Vault Night Club, Gator City, Rockeys Dueling Piano Bar, Envy, Stereo Nightclub, Infusion Hookah Bar & Lounge and Sharab Lounge. It shows users the average age of people in the bar or club as well as the male-to-female ratio, said Marissa Betley, a spokeswoman for SceneTap.
The app will also allow venues to post coupons and specials for users to buy, and it will show the drink specials at various locations.
SceneTap is free to download for both iPhone and Android devices.
SceneTap collects gender and age data through the two sensors installed at the entrances and exits of each venue, Betley said. One sensor will keep an updated person count, while the other will detect faces to figure out how many males and females are in the room.
All data will be collected anonymously, she said, meaning there won’t be pictures taken of people who walk into the venues.
Since SceneTap’s launch in July 2011, about 78,000 people have used the app, Betley said.
Gainesville will be the fourth city to go live with SceneTap. Chicago, Austin and Bloomington, Ind., are included in the app.
After Gainesville’s launch, the app will go live next week in other college towns, including Athens, Ga., and Madison, Wis.
Jon Petrie, general manager of Sharab Lounge, said he believes SceneTap will help adjust drink specials for patrons.
“If the technology works and pinpoints what kind of demographic we are getting in here, I think it will be great,” he said.
Brandon Eberhart, a 20-year-old business administration sophomore at Santa Fe College, said he thinks the app will help him plan his nights before he walks out the door.
But he said there’s a chance that the male-to-female-ratio data could be skewed if a male has effeminate features or vice-versa.
Mark Hatton, a 22-year-old political science senior at UF, agreed but said he thinks face detection by SceneTap sensors will upset some people who are concerned about privacy.
“People may not like the idea that their faces are being scanned,” he said.
