

A day on Chatroulette, the web's weirdest new outpost - bensummers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/feb/14/chatroulette

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nixy
My experience with Chatroulette:

    
    
      Naked guy
      Naked guy
      Guy singing
      Bored guy
      Bored guy
      Bored guy
      Girl clicking "next"
      Two guys laughing
      Bored guy
      Three girls, one saying "is that a boy or a girl?"
      Naked guy
      Goatse picture
      Naked guy

~~~
mortenjorck
ChatRoulette should start each connection with a vastly downsampled image
which you can then advance to native resolution if you actually care to see
what the rest of the pixels look like.

This should also be disableable, of course, as I imagine the risk that you
will see something you didn't want to is part of the draw for a lot of users.

~~~
rogermugs
best idea ever. and the inevitable downfall of the service altogether.

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ShabbyDoo
I tried ChatRoulette for the first time by myself and experienced rejection at
a rate faster than could possibly be had at any bar. As a chubby, unshaven 35
year-old, this did not surprise me. It's amusing to see the looks on people's
faces as they're evaluating you.

Next time, at my wife's suggestion, I held our 11 month-old in full view of
the camera. Pretty soon, one of the naked guys came up. The look of horror on
his face as he quickly hit "next" was priceless. I don't think he had
considered the idea that he would be showing himself off to a kid who just got
his first teeth.

~~~
rogermugs
worth it for your kid?

~~~
ShabbyDoo
What is your concern?

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frederickcook
"Everybody wants to be entertained," he told me. With a look of disdain, he
explained how most users simply want to consume - while far fewer are prepared
to do something worth watching. "

As this thing gets more press and more people try it out, it will be severely
diluted by people unwilling to produce. Folks who have traditionally spent
their time on YouTube watching videos have nothing to contribute here, and
decrease the overall quality of the service.

Perhaps adding categories would weed out the noise a bit. I'd love to randomly
chat with someone on HN.

~~~
skolor
In that case, put some sort of contact info in your profile. I went to go send
you an email, just to see what would happen, but the lack of contact didn't
help anything.

~~~
frederickcook
touché

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johnyzee
What I don't get is why he doesn't block the guys jerking off? If +5 people
report the feed as offensive then blacklist the IP for a couple of hours or
something like that. That would instantly improve the site's appeal a lot.

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alexro
Apparently we need the reality to bark at us every so often, so that we could
continue to enjoy our safe caves more

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DrJokepu
If the author thinks this is the "web's weirdest outpost", he obviously have
never heard of /b/ (for which he should be thankful, by the way).

~~~
bensummers
Startup idea: a combination of the best (worst?) bits of /b/ and chatroulette.

You can thank me when you've made your millions.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
what do you think can haz cheezburgers is?

~~~
patio11
Mercifully free of pornography.

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illumin8
You should really read the linked article with an email from the founder, age
17. This kid has built a pretty impressive site, although I wouldn't really
call it a business yet. He does host it on 7 servers and uses 7 gigabits of
bandwidth to handle all of the video streams. The code optimizations he must
have done to handle this are pretty impressive:

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/chatroulettes-
found...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/chatroulettes-
founder-17-introduces-himself/?ref=technology)

------
akadien
I bet Chris Hansen is already working on "To Catch a Predator: Chatroullette
Edition".

~~~
byrneseyeview
I spent a very fun fifteen minutes on Chatroulette the other day. Every time a
new chat started, I'd type "Hey! Haven't I seen on you _To Catch a Predator_?"

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Tichy
So do you figure combining that concept with recommendations a la StumbleUpon
would work, or just be boring?

I suspect "everybody just wants to consume" could be it's downfall, that is,
there would not be an even enough match between "consumers" and "producers" to
provide suitable recommendations for everyone. Producers to be taken in
general, for example perhaps more men would like to see women for cybersex
than women would like to see men.

~~~
danohuiginn
Introducing some kind of 'how interesting was that chat' rating would give
users an incentive to liven things up; maybe the more interesting you are, the
more you get connected to other interesting people.

['course, definitions of interestingness vary plenty. Maybe you leave that in
as part of the fun; maybe you introduce some kind of categories -- e.g.
slashdot-style +5 funny, -2 offensive]

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antirez
The site appears to be down btw, no way to figure myself how odd it is...

Edit: it's down just form Italy. I hope it's a routing problem and not italian
providers censoring this ASAP.

Edit #2: finally it worked, was just a routing problem.

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ThomPete
Props to the author for a well written article.

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rogermugs
should it be surprising to us that a place which offers anonymous voyeuristic
nudity with basically no consequences appeals to a world in which pleasing
ourselves and awkward desires is our driving goal in life?

i submit it should not.

