Flat-screen digital graffiti boards displaying text messages and photos sent from cellphones are beginning to give the virtual world a foothold in pubs, clubs, and beyond.
For an entire generation, online friendships, conversation by text message, and instant message confessionals are the norm - and now two local companies are trying to parlay those sorts of virtual interactions into places where people actually interact face-to-face.
Aerva Inc. and LocaModa Inc., both of Cambridge, have created technology that lets people use cellphones to send messages or pictures to video screens scattered around late night hot spots and other venues where people socialize.
"Our premise when we started this company five years ago was screens are going to be everywhere; handsets are going to be in every pocket. It seems crazy to not have the handset interact with screen," said Sanjay Manandhar, chief technology officer of Aerva, which powers BarCast, an interactive network of screens that have begun popping up in several dozen area bars over the past few months.
For now, interactive digital signs are a fledgling enterprise, according to Melissa Webster, program vice president of content and digital media technologies for IDC. The most primitive digital signs are little more than computer screens or TVs that play looping video or slides, but as new technologies allow screens to connect to the Internet, the power for advertisers and content makers expands - content can become local, user-generated, or even tailored to the crowd watching a given screen.
Aerva has focused on installing its systems in Europe, where text messaging took off much faster than in the United States. But the company has been expanding its reach domestically, where the market finally seems ready, Manandhar said, for basic installations like screens in hospitals that can be instantly tuned to display emergency alert messages, or in high schools where teens can text answers to a sample SAT question.
Tom Ellis, a researcher at Boston University, used BarCast TV this Halloween at The Tam on Tremont Street, taking a photo of himself and his friends with his cellphone and sending it to the screen in response to a costume contest that gave him a glimpse of who was wearing what in other bars and enabling him to vote.
Though the idea of boosting the social scene by giving people yet another reason to look down at the screen in their hands or up at one on the wall may seem anti-intuitive when people could simply turn to the stranger sitting next to them, it may just work.
"It works kind of as a team exercise," Ellis said. "You might say, you don't go to a bar just to ignore one another and play pinball - and yet people do that."
LocaModa creates a similar experience, giving the kind of interactivity commonplace on the Web a role in real life. The company was founded three years ago and experimented with cellphones as remote controls to browse real estate ads on digital screens. In September, the company raised $6 million and now focuses on user-generated content, says chief executive Stephen Randall.
Currently, LocaModa's Wiffiti application allows people watching remotely from their Web browsers to peek at a screen in the ice cream shop Toscanini's in Cambridge, or a number of other screens - both virtual and real. Anyone who sends a text to a shortcode assigned to a screen can broadcast anything, "Be My Double Scoop" or "Happy Birthday Rachel." Eventually, Randall said, the technology will link with online social networks so people will be able to know which of their friends are hanging out where, and what kind of music is playing at hotspots around town.
Greg Agahigian, who set up an interactive digital screen at Club Cafe said his screen gets anywhere from 300 to 600 messages on a typical Friday or Saturday and allows him to poll clubgoers on their favorite song or cutest bartender. It also opens another channel for people who may be more comfortable starting conversations with their thumbs to chat, flirt, or interact. The technology does not disclose users' phone numbers.
The new medium also creates possibilities for advertising. People are used to seeing screens all day, without manipulating them. Interactive screens give patrons a reason to engage with the screen.
A retailer or club owner could push a promotion to people's phones if they opt in, offering a special discount. Marketers could get basic information about an ad's effectiveness - something that's now standard on the Internet where advertisers count clicks, but that isn't available for most of television.
Digital signage has been slow to catch on in retail settings, said Gale Daikoku, research director at Gartner, because what most customers want aren't bells and whistles, or promotions that can be downloaded onto their most personal technological device. Most people just want in-stock items.
But as technology is integrated into everyday settings, it could create social possibilities, much the way the blogosphere and the Internet have brought new voices into real-world events.
"It changes the rules," Randall said. "Imagine a politician with a screen behind them - if they stand up on stage and say something, you say 'I think it's a lie.' Get yourself heard, send a message to the screen."
A fully integrated Web world still seems a long way off. Digital billboards like the ones that recognized Tom Cruise in "Minority Report" have yet to become commonplace. For now, interactive digital screens may just be the next generation of pinball.
But people who vote for their favorite American Idol by text and depend on their phone as a lifeline may be primed for a world filled with interactive screens.
"In the scheme of things, we're moving toward expanded online identity," Webster said. "And there's no reason those online identities can't start to be linked" to real life.
Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.
