
What to make of chatroulette? - prosa
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/02/what-to-make-of-chatroulette.html
======
DanBlake
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 "

~~~
prosa
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.

~~~
tjogin
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.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> 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".

It might if you specifically clicked "please show me only people interested in
chatting and not showing me their dicks."

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

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

------
mynameishere
For those who missed it on reddit

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

~~~
FreeRadical
I don't dare click this at work :/

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

------
coffeemug
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).

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

~~~
pavel_lishin
No, but I remember FU-FMe.

Much more excited about that.

------
henrikschroder
Obligatory: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euTu04297sI>

(NSFW)

~~~
eru
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0>

(SFW)

[Sorry, could not resist.]

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

~~~
eru
I don't like links to Youtube videos here. At least not without a description
of what awaits me. (I should probably have added irony-tags or something to my
post above. I wanted to make fun of the videos, not encourage them.)

------
cing
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.

------
jasonlbaptiste
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.

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

~~~
tptacek
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.

------
callmeed
_"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
Skype is too serious business for something like this, I think.

------
paul9290
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!

------
prosa
Jason Kottke had a fun time:

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

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

~~~
megamark16
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.

~~~
orborde
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.

~~~
megamark16
Good points indeed. From their (very short) TOS;

"Everything supplied by the user you are connected with is not property of
Chatroulette, and therefore Chatroulette is not responsible for what you will
find."

------
nandemo
_"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
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).

------
rodyancy
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.

~~~
derefr
> 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.

------
megamark16
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

~~~
DanBlake
<http://tinychat.com> / tokbox.com / stickam.com / etc.

~~~
megamark16
You are my new best friend.

------
DanielBMarkham
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.

------
ohashi
How about an endless source of new memes?

