

Chatroulette may be about to make a very big mistake - SteveP
http://howwl.com/post/?p=260

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furyg3
I feel like hotornot solved this problem a lot time ago.

Just let users rate other users, and let them set their thresholds.

You could even have the software automatically calculate a score based on how
quickly/often a user is skipped. Vulgar users are usually skipped often, and
within a few seconds of a connection. Stop connecting those users with
newbies, and start connecting them with each other.

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jimboyoungblood
hotornot solved the problem by moderating all photos before they were pushed
to the general public. this approach obviously wouldn't work for CR.

your suggestions are pretty good- i'd be somewhat surprised if these sorts of
things weren't in place already.

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michael_dorfman
Setting aside the business model issues for a moment: I'm really intrigued by
the idea of penis-recognition software. Now, that's a branch of AI I never
even considered before, and already my mind is racing through the algorithmic
approaches...

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dagw
If they get the penis-recognition AI working, they can split the site in two,
chattroulette and penisroulette, and automatically route videos to the correct
site. I'm honestly not sure which site would become the more popular though.

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al_james
I think the penis showing men would just disguise their penises. So we would
see penises with little wigs and glasses on. I would like to see the penis AI
cope with that!

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chopsueyar
Would you really?

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axod
It's not like Chatroulette was going to be a long-term thing. It's million-
dollar-homepage 2.0.

<http://www.quantcast.com/chatroulette.com>

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gacba
<insert your supreme being here> help us if you're wrong. _shudder_

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al_james
Chatroulette is not going to be a viable long term business.

It does, however, tell us two things:

1) A lot of men seem to like to show there penis to people (especially girls)
2) Girls dont like to see random men's penises

Square that circle (e.g. make the men pay and pay the girls to watch) and you
will be on a million dollar idea.

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kscaldef
I think it's interesting how almost everyone assumes the naked guys on
chatroulette are straight.

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al_james
No I dont think that at all... I just think gay guys will do it for free, so
there is (maybe) as much money to be made!

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akadruid
tl;dr: converting the darker parts of the web into a viable business model is
hard.

Mind you, I'd say chatroulette's problem is not obscene content, but the fact
that it's a fad for bored teenagers.

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eli
I disagree. It's at least theoretically possible to find advertisers that want
to reach bored teenagers. Very few people would risk having their logo appear
on chatroulette.

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akadruid
The problem is that chatrouletter was a novelty. The bored teenagers are
already moving on to the next thing. I don't even want to imagine what you'd
try and sell to an audience of a few dozen exhibitionists.

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Micand
'"If he doesn’t make a dramatic move soon to clean up the service, the brand
will be permanently tarnished," says another interested investor.'

Is Chatroulette not already synonymous with anonymous penises? I'd say the
brand's already tarnished in that regard. Not that this is necessarily a bad
thing -- anonymous penises may be exactly what some users are looking for.

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SkyMarshal
He should just sell out to Youporn or whatever. Pretty sure CR isn't the next
the Facebook, worth turning down billion dollar offers for.

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adw
It depends what you call success, really. If you want anarchy, ChatRoulette's
got it. If you want genuine mass appeal, then you need to meet the mainstream
halfway. Look at the career trajectory of most bands.

If you insist, you can call that a sell-out, because it is. But what it really
is is optimizing for a different pay-off.

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Alex3917
It looks like they are also about to launch chat roulette by city. Just go to
sanfrancisco.chatroulette.com and you can see that it's already set up, they
just haven't announced it yet.

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chopsueyar
I believe any chatrouletter subdomain creates a "channel" for that specific
subdomain.

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Aetius
With P2P the image recognition would have to be done on the client anyways. So
those who don't enjoy watching phalli would be able to change their
preferences covertly.

He could even provide a simple form like

    
    
      [ ] block nudity
      [x] censor nudity
    

Those baring themselves to the peer wouldn't even know whether it was worth it
or not. That's what I'd do anyways.

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getonit
Just make the filter optional and default, like Google's image SafeSearch.
Next?

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jpr
They should name the filter "Cockblock".

