

Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid - inmygarage
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/chatroulettes-founder-17-introduces-himself/?src=twt&twt=nytimesbits

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inmygarage
"I am glad that my relatives helped me with it by ‘investing’ some money in my
idea. It wasn’t very much money, so I couldn’t just buy new servers just like
that, I had to optimize my code as much as possible instead."

No choice but to optimize. Love it.

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jacoblyles
I have a question for Hacker News. I started working on a website extremely
similar to Chatroulette about three months ago (with a few interesting
differences). But I haven't finished it yet because I'm busy on other things
in my life, I chose some wrong technologies to get started with, and I'm not
the best developer in the world. Now that I've heard of Chatroulette, should I
keep on going 'til I finish my project, or move on to the next thing?

My biggest concern is that I thought the site would be so cool that traffic
would grow exponentially from organic word of mouth. Now that there is a
Chatroulette, I'm afraid it loses its wow factor.

In fact, I can still think of some features that would lower the penis count
and increase the usefulness/fun of the site.

edit: Is this query too off-topic? Should I start another thread? Seemed like
a good place to ask.

~~~
nowthatwerehere
You want an honest answer, Jacob? You're competing with a 17-year-old kid who
made this web site for fun. I think you're taking yourself a bit seriously,
and that's not a good thing.

Are you having fun with making it? Make it, then. Make a damn good web site.
If it's damn good, people will use it. You _can_ make this a damn good web
site, right? It's not going to be a shitpile? I'm asking seriously, not
rhetorically. Generally quality is more important than anything; if you've got
it, you're set.

If you're not making it for fun, then frankly, I don't know why you'd have
bothered to start in the first place. You don't think you're going to get rich
off something like this, I hope. If you're learning something by making this
site, you can still learn by making.

Or did you do it just to see the results? Because you can see the results on
ChatRoulette. If you think you can do better, stop asking us if a better
product will be worth anything and start asking yourself if you can really do
better. If it's better, in a way that people care about, they'll use it. If
it's not, then nobody will even care enough to mock you.

Are you doing something meaningful with your time? Answer honestly. If you
are, then I can't see why you'd ask us anything of this sort. If you're not,
then get yourself together and do cool shit.

(Somebody who uses this site more translate what I said into Hacker Newspeak.
Something something penetration adaptability futureexperience something
tippingpoint gladwell rand.)

~~~
jacoblyles
Thanks for your reply. You have a clarity of thought in your comment that is
actually very helpful. I feel a bit foolish asking dumb questions sometimes,
but it gives me an opportunity to learn from people with better thinking on a
subject.

~~~
qeorge
Its not a dumb question, and I hope you haven't been discouraged from future
participation. The advice you've been given here is excellent though. If I
could add one thing, it would be this:

In your first paragraph, you've already made 3 excuses about why you haven't
released anything:

    
    
       - "I'm busy on other things in my life"
       - "I chose some wrong technologies to get started with"
       - "I'm not the best developer in the world"
    

You've got to cut that shit out right now. Let this be the last time you got
jumped on an idea because somebody else was working his or her ass off on it,
while you were making excuses.

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ams6110
_...the simultaneous user count grew from 10 to 50, then from 50 to 100 and so
on. Each time the user count grew, I had to rewrite my code completely,
because my software and hardware couldn’t handle it all._

A nice real-world example of how getting something out there is more important
than trying to achieve technical perfection first. He validated the concept,
then worked out the technical issues as he scaled up. Meanwhile he had some
revenue coming in to help fund development and hosting.

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breck
This has been the fastest growing site I've seen in a while.

One interesting sidenote: the word "roulette" is terribly hard to spell.
Pretty much every typo domain for it got snatched up pretty quickly, and are
currently showing AdSense for domains. (chatroullette.com, chatroulete.com,
etc.)

Probably making a solid amount of money. I hope the owner himself is the one
sitting on them.

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hussong
It's only hard to spell if you have no clue about french ;-)

Here's a memory hook:

\- "ou" because that's french for "oo", as in: douche.

\- "l" since it comes from "roule" or "rouler", as in: joule, boule (there is
no "ll" between "ou" and "e" in french, ever).

\- "tt" since it's a female noun, as in: cassette, baguette, couchette.

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eam
Well I think most visitors don't know French, as the article indicates most
are from the US. Even I misspelled the domain on my first try. doh!

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hussong
Honestly, it took me a minute to realize that the overlap between French and
English is actually smaller than I thought (and much smaller than between
English and German). I had a hard time coming up with sticky analogies for the
spelling of "roulette".

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xiaoma
After reading this, I gave the site a try. It sucked. For half an hour or so,
one person after another just clicked next. In that space, there was one
person who asked "where u from?" and 2 doodlers. There were at least a dozen
people filming themselves masturbating. Using the site was simultaneously
revolting and mind-numbing.

It would be difficult to get a worse user experience from a website.

~~~
gridspy
It doesn't take long to realise that truly random is not what you want - you
want somewhat filtered so people who are being disgusting / absurd can do it
in their own space.

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JMiao
countdown to the mixergy guy tracking him down. "HOW SOME RUSSIAN KID BUILT A
SITE THAT'S BIGGER THAN YOURS" ...and how you could do it, too!

~~~
AndrewWarner
Frankly, I'm a little slow. I should have jumped on this the minute Fred
Wilson brought up the site.

Update: Thanks for the prod. I sent him an email.

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maurycy
He is an awesome and inspiring guy! I really appreciate how honest he is
still, and how not sure what the service actually is.

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kls
\--I actually think that it would be best to found Chatroulette as a
U.S.-based company. But this is just an idea.

If that thinking starts to change it will be devastating to the US business
sector.

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defen
7 Gigabits/second...can someone translate that into a dollar amount for me?

~~~
DanBlake
The cheapest bandwidth most can buy is about 2-3$ per mb/s in the US. Likely
to be more expensive in europe.

That would mean each gigabit would cost between 2k-3k USD.

~~~
mixmax
That adds up to around $5 _billion_ a month. I think your estimate is a bit
off ;-)

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ALee
Some things I find odd:

A) There is something different about this site. In a craigslist (no high
production value type of way). It also has very strong network effects because
as more people join, the whole site becomes even more valuable.

B) I feel like I need a friend with me as we play. It's odd that it feels like
going into the city or a bar (never know what I'll find), but I'm also totally
safe.

C) This kid ABSOLUTELY needs to meet up with PG, Craig Newmark, or somebody
before he's taken advantage of by a crazy VC.

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simonw
I don't know anything about streaming video - anyone got any idea what kind of
software stack he'd be running for this, and what kind of custom development
he would have had to do?

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jey
Flash + Flash Media Server (or clone, like Red5). It's just a matter of
plugging together the pieces.

~~~
olegk
Is there a way to send the video stream directly to the other user, not
through the server? Sort of P2P-like?

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abthomson
Yes, and this is what chatroulette does.

I did a TCP dump of the traffic and the data sent to the central servers is
very minimal, mostly short plain-text messages containing little bits of
information - your partner's camera status, number of users online, next
button pressed, etc.

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DanBlake
If thats the case, and its using stratus:

1: He is either misquoted or lieing about bandwidth usage in the article.

2: He is breaking adobe's tos for stratus, as you are not allowed to run ads
along side any tech using it.

~~~
cellis
<http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/eula/stratus.html>

I don't see anything in the TOS against advertising.

Nor in the FAQ, with regards to commercial applications:
<http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/stratus/>

Edit: That's an article. We're talking about the actual TOS, which does not
specifically disallow advertising: i think they simply want to make sure
people aren't billing for access to p2p services (which is stated clearly in
the TOS).

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DanBlake
Look harder then:

[http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/p2p_ap...](http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/p2p_apps_stratus_lccs.html)

"Stratus is for non-commercial use only."

Additionally, when you receive your beta access they show additional docs
letting you know that if you want to run ads/make money you need to look into
livecycle. Even had a adobe rep contact us after we launched one of our p2p
services informing us of such.

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coryl
Quick, someone apply this format to dating!

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vaksel
already been done, search for internet speed dating or something along those
lines .

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csmeder
Hes not even old enough to view the most of the cams

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cousin_it
Why, does he have no eyes? You're using American cultural assumptions where
they don't apply :-)

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kayteeeeee
You are sooo cool---Chat Roulette Russian kid --- whoever you are. You are in
fact a global peace maker and connector of people-ideas. I was a little
revolted of course--like most---at first-but then I started playing my guitar
for people and singing and they played back at me and we did songs together.
But then of course it all broke down when one of the guys at the singing chat
party ran into his bedroom---got a guitar and whipped of his clothes and put a
sock on his dick---but you know---it's the thought that counts! kudos to chat
roulette my friend from katy in eugene oregon!!

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xexers
I am trying to learn German and I would love to chat with people from Germany
in German. Is there a service like that?

I wonder if he could modify the randomness to at least just a single country.

~~~
Todd
Check out livemocha.com

~~~
xexers
Thanks!

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thomasfl
Best chat roulette screen shots:
[http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-24-best-chat-
roulette-s...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-24-best-chat-roulette-
screenshots-nsfw)

I kind of liked the jolly nazi&israeli couple doing thumbs up. :-)

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rapind
Reminded of when voice chat was first available on win95 via netmeeting back
in the day where there were maybe 50 people tinkering with it and you just
connect to any of the other early adopting nerds to tell each other how frikin
cool it was. Random, anon, but friendly.

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morais90
honeslty...an amazing site would be one were you can do the same video chat as
on chatroulette but u could pick at what u are looking for....such a
girls/guys who just want to talk ... girls/guys who want some webcaming
pleasure...

that would be the best site :0 thx

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cousin_it
That's the Moscow State University in the photo's background. Suddenly I feel
so warm!

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lolcraft
From the article: _"I would love to visit the United States."_

If people like him wanted so hard to travel to my country, I'd already be
rallying my government to give those people a damn grant. Time for the USA to
reconsider whether the TSA's "security" pays.

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cdr
What? What does 'TSA security' have to do with some kid saying he wants to
visit the US? Can't believe this comment was upvoted.

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gnosis
I think you misunderestimate the animosity many people hold towards the TSA.

The upvotes likely reflect that animosity as much or more than simple
agreement with the implication that there's some sort of connection between
the TSA and the kid's inability to travel to the US. Not to mention the rest
of the comment regarding giving the kid a grant.

~~~
petercooper
Except, really, it's more likely to be because Russia is not in the Visa
Waiver Program that makes it super easy for most Europeans to head to the US
on a whim.

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petercooper
_A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid_

As opposed to a 17 year old Russian adult? Or a 17 year old Russian senior
citizen?

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nazgulnarsil
moot for the masses.

