What to make of chatroulette?

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/02/what-to-make-of-chatroulette.html

by tessro • 16 years ago

76 47 16 years ago

avc.com

ohashi• 16 years ago

How about an endless source of new memes?

tessro3• 16 years ago

Jason Kottke had a fun time:

http://kottke.org/10/02/chatroulette

jasonlbaptiste3• 16 years ago

heres my take: we have millions of people connected to the net. id like to meet new people of similar interests. we should be able to connect them instantly, pushing new people to them. ie- id like to meet new entrepreneurs. introduce me to one new entrepreneur a day.

tessro3• 16 years ago

That's a great idea. How do you overcome the social anxiety of getting dropped into a series of essentially on-the-spot interviews? I bet anonymity plays a huge factor in the popularity of the site, but that can't work (at least not in the same way) for what you're talking about.

I wonder if there is a way around that.

jasonlbaptiste3• 16 years ago

i wouldnt do it via webcam, thats just a big barrier to entry.

im thinking of doing it as an experiment here. hiten shah said something to me like: i try to meet one new entrepreneur a day. that struck me. imagine if you met one new fellow entrepreneur a day? so heres the experiment:

sign up for a list: first name, last name, email address (required). optional- twitter, facebook, blog links for context. connect each person on the list to a new entrepreneur a day.

aheilbut2• 16 years ago

That was exactly the value of twitter, before it started to get co-opted by big media, celebrities, and social media consultants.

tptacek• 16 years ago

I've been on Twitter awhile and I haven't had to read anything from big media, celebrities, and social media consultants. Either Ashton Kutcher just doesn't like me, or those problems aren't problems if you're selective about who you follow.

DanBlake3• 16 years ago

Its essentially omegle 2.0

Its definitely a fun site in the way many sites are 'fun' - However, like 4chan- Turning it into a business is not going to be straight forward as due to the extreme content your only real option is to sell direct ads to the likes of fleshlight and livejasmin.

Im sure there is some options they can explore via filtering ie- " I am a xxx looking to meet with a yyyy near location zzzzz "

tessro3• 16 years ago

Yeah -- I imagine you'd have to be REAL careful about that, though. Many of the types of people you refer to would LOVE to claim to be looking for [non-sexual activity] just for a chance to flash something offensive.

DanBlake3• 16 years ago

Chatroulette and Omegle are more about a new "feature" than the sites themself.

That feature of course being, impromptu and anonymous introductions.

tjogin• 16 years ago

Well, if you spend five minutes on chatroulette you've already seen so much offensive stuff that the next offensive thing you see doesn't really bother you all that much. You just click "next".

Being able to not freak out over someone doing something gross is an absolute necessity to spend any time on chatroulette. And I think this is a good thing, because if nobody gets freaked out anymore, then its no longer fun to freak people out, and — finally — that stuff becomes marginalized.

mynameishere• 16 years ago

For those who missed it on reddit

http://i.imgur.com/wN9Sl.jpg

FreeRadical• 16 years ago

I don't dare click this at work :/

jakewolf• 16 years ago

Hitler makes a comeback...

orborde2• 16 years ago

It's safe, and hilarious. Unless your office really has something against Nazis.

rodyancy• 16 years ago

This is what Facebook would be if instead of having friends, every day you were thrown in with a group of 100 strangers and there was a video feed. Some people (especially men) act strange when they are in front of a bunch of strangers for a short period of time, with little chance of meeting them later.

derefr2• 16 years ago

> Some people (especially men) act strange when they are in front of a bunch of strangers for a short period of time, with little chance of meeting them later.

I would turn that around—some animals act strange when they know they'll have to deal with the same strangers later. This strange behavior is called "society"; it is a tenuous and fragile phenomenon.

tel2• 16 years ago

What always has interested me is that whoever is running it has some sizeable investment. It can't be cheap.

megamark165• 16 years ago

If they capture every video stream that goes through their servers they must have a TON of raw footage, I'm sure some of it could be spliced together/sold/subscribed to/whatever.

Not a pretty business model (at least, I'm assuming there's a low pretty-to-ugly ratio on Chatroulette :-) but probably a functional one.

orborde2• 16 years ago

That poses a rather large privacy problem. If word gets out that every stream on the site is being recorded, people will feel much less secure in their anonymity on the site and will probably stop doing interesting things with it. This will be even worse if Chatroulette starts publishing streams.

dabeeeenster• 16 years ago

Recent versions of flash allow for direct video connections...

tel2• 16 years ago

20,000 users all the time with total anonymity and no site-related income and it doesn't matter how you're doing video.

megamark165• 16 years ago

So the real question is if someone can build something like this that connects perfect strangers via video/audio so easily through their browsers on any operating system that supports flash/webcam/mic, why can't I pull up a page, enter someone's email address, and drop into a chat just like chatroulette with the person I'm looking for without having to install anything extra?

I know gmail has audio/video support (and has for a while), but it uses a special plugin and doesn't support linux, which I guess is fine (although annoying), but why should I have to install your special plugin if I've got flash installed and Chatroulette can do it?

Mark

DanBlake3• 16 years ago

http://tinychat.com / tokbox.com / stickam.com / etc.

megamark165• 16 years ago

You are my new best friend.

aheilbut2• 16 years ago

Does nobody remember CU-SeeMe and VocalTec iPhone c. 1995?

pavel_lishin2• 16 years ago

No, but I remember FU-FMe.

Much more excited about that.

henrikschroder• 16 years ago

Obligatory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euTu04297sI

(NSFW)

eru2• 16 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

(SFW)

[Sorry, could not resist.]

jolie2• 16 years ago

damn you... What a fool I was to click your link.

DanielBMarkham• 16 years ago

This is a great idea.

I remember as soon as P2P chat came out on the net, I was using the random chat function. It's just a fun thing to do every now and then. You meet all sorts of people.

I think this app has a lot of potential.

callmeed• 16 years ago

"But my son's assertion that chatroulette is porn doesn't seem exactly right to me."

In my first 5 screens, 2 guys had their junk out (one guy was servicing himself) and a 3rd held a sign that read "Show Your Tits" ...

I guess it's not porn in the traditional sense, but still ... it's obvious what people are using it for.

BTW, wouldn't it be easy for Skype to add a feature like this?

slig• 16 years ago

Skype is too serious business for something like this, I think.

derefr2• 16 years ago

It might not be pornography, but it's definitely pornographic (in the same way that extreme violence and such can be pornographic.) You're not there for any sort of self-actualization; you're there, much like a circus, because it's a strange sensory experience.

paul9290• 16 years ago

This site puts a face to all the commenters on Digg and YouTube. Which is a portrait to the carnal side of humanity; not our best side!

amadiver• 16 years ago

12 spins, 5 cocks. That's a dangerously high percentage of dicks.

jolie2• 16 years ago

What, no boobs? Or is that, like, a premium feature?

dailo10• 16 years ago

3 dicks and I was done. I seriously wish I could erase that from my memory.

coffeemug• 16 years ago

It's something you do in the dorm to pass the time while you're high or horny. I imagine pairing it up with pizza delivery ads would propel it to a multimillion dollar business (you can't monetize the horniness because horny students don't pay for stuff).

cing• 16 years ago

To hell with anonymity, I'd like to see a version with a "smarter roulette" so I could be paired with someone who I might be interested in talking to.

nandemo• 16 years ago

"how did it take 15 years for the Internet to deliver this experience?"

It's simple: nobody did it before because it obviously doesn't work, AND there's a related model that does work and pays.

Go to chatroulette. There are about 20 blokes for every woman. Most of these guys are looking to talk and have (some kind of) sex with women. The rest are probably trying to talk and have sex with other guys.

The way to fix that is to charge the guys and pay the girls, and needless to say that's a successful business model though perhaps a bit saturated by now.

ALee• 16 years ago

I just found out about it tonight, but it reminds me of all the problems and all the benefits of Craigslist (and really connecting with other people for example). Unlike the broadcast, asynchronous mediums of YouTube, etc. , this site seems directly made so we can connect with a a real person and be entertained (in the broadest sense). The anonymity allows people to do things that they wouldn't normally do when connected to their identity (allows cool performance art too).

You'll notice that a lot of folks like to visit chartroulette together with friends because it's like going out. Being able to tell somebody... "crazy night, we saw... and...."

The internet is supposed to be our window into another world right? I guess this is the first real start of that. And... maybe, just maybe, we'll be entertained by someone like us (or shocked by a fat guy in a bra).

What to make of chatroulette?

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