The tried-and-trusted way of going out for a night on the town has always been pretty simple: Go to a bar, and hope for the best. Call it the analog method.
And now, the digital method is here. Meet barKing, which just launched in Boston. Born from a triumvirate of friends who realized the main thing working against one’s social agenda for an evening is typically a lack of immediate knowledge of how good or bad a scene on any given night and time (until the bars stay open later, anyway). Led by Northeastern-grad Jake Shea, barKing aims to disrupt other similar nightlife startups by incorporating an immediacy factor to the main utility of the platform.
“At the end of the day the app was built with the idea in mind that different people would use it to assess a scene before even walking through the door, be it for the crowd, or potential dates,” says Shea. “We wanted to facilitate the in-bar dynamic, instead of recreate it.”
The app automatically incorporates every bar or tavern listed on Google in your area, and lets you access the content once you are within 200 feet of a spot. Once you log in with your Facebook it migrates your profile basics (name, sex, etc), allows you to customize it and manually invite contacts to join (without spamming them). Once users “hop in” there are drop-down profiles of other in-bar patrons that use the app who post real-time scene breakdowns (ie: dead or packed house, guy/girl ratios, go-to drinks, etc), and through the internal IM function you can chat up someone across the bar you may or may not recognize from your glut of stranger-friends connected to you on Facebook.
This could get interesting.
barKing. NO COST. NOW AVAILABLE ON ITUNES AND ANDROID.
Dan is a freelance journalist and has written for publications including Vice, Esquire, the Daily Beast, Fast Company, Pacific Standard, MEL, Leafly, Thrillist, and DigBoston.
