

Is chatroulette over? - filmschool

I have an idea that's been stewing in my head for awhile but first I need additional input.<p>I've read that both Fanning and Parker believe that chatroulette has the potential to become big.<p>I think that once they've fixed the obvious problems, what's left will be a big group of people nexting and nexting 'til they encounter the very limited pool of attractive or interesting people using it. Doesn't sound very fun.<p>Is chatroulette a fad that's over?
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xg
I say this as a former developer who created some of the first video chat
rooms ever (CUworld in 2000). Talking to random people online eventually
devolves into porn. You can't help it. Chatroulette got around that stigma by
eliminating all approach anxiety to a conversation (Parker's words)--sort of
like the exact opposite effect of perusing profiles of people on a dating site
and messaging someone very attractive (who probably gets inundated with
requests).

I think the notion of turning chatroulette into a performance platform is very
interesting. Some of the Ben Folds chatroulette performances were pretty
fascinating and managed to get at the one-to-many-ness necessary to drive
large amounts of traffic on a consumer site (you don't need that to make an
interesting product--but Skype seems to have nailed 1 to 1 video pretty well).
Being able to have different bands 'battle' on chatroulette or have comics or
musicians present new material could be great.

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filmschool
Perfect. Thanks.

