Monday, March 8, 2010

Three reasons Chatroulette is not just a fad

Two black boxes sit, one on top the other, next to a large area for text exchanges. The layout is simple, unintimidating. When I visited the first time, I was surprised not to be attacked by popup advertisements. There is, in fact, hardly any advertising at all, except a single text ad at the base of the page.

Chatroulette’s founder, Andrey Ternovskiy, says that he did this on purpose. He has no business plans for his project, and doesn't think it is going to make him rich, In fact, the 17-year old Russian high-schooler admits, he doesn’t even know what Chatroullette is anymore. It started as a way to meet new people, a virtual bar, and has turned into something much larger and more complex.
Turn it on and see for yourself. The face-to-face encounters range from casual small talk to lude performances, with your 20,000 plus new acquaintances streaming live from France, Pakistan, and California. The best part of the site is the diversity of the people you get to talk to.
As you can tell from my praises, the website is more then just a fad. Here are three reasons why I think it is here to stay:
  1. Its potential is endless – Though its advertising content now is minimal, the possibilities are endless. A fledgling site, with traffic numbers growing largely due to word of mouth, that pulls in 20,000 curious visitors a night would look very attractive to advertisers for future growth.
  2. Its actually fun – I’ve been on the website twice already, and it is an awesome time killer with a bunch of bored friends.There is something very appealing about anonymous social encounters.
  3. Real people use it – The site has the danger of being adopted by a certain subculture, or being over run by smut. The encouraging sign I noticed while using it was that it has yet to be, and with careful management, it won't. I ran into an off-duty soldier, some college students in Argentina, and a man from Wisconsin with a big mustache on his lunch break. Sure, there’s the occasional naked dude or exhibitionist couple, but it is only often enough to scare off the prudish visitors. 
For those of you who don’t believe the bizarre encounters, look at these collected  screenshots by awesomer.
Visit the site when you have time and then let me know your opinion. Is it here to stay? Stumble Upon Toolbar

4 comments:

  1. chatroulette like sites:

    http://timetotag.com/siteslike/chatroulette.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Small funny video on chatroulette:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWDtbO3DrB8

    ReplyDelete
  3. jessica alba is fake its from movie ''good luck chuck ''

    ReplyDelete
  4. No, it's a Jessica Alba video that's online. It's from when she did a staring contest- http://www.ibeatyou.com/competition/86a130/the-stare-no-blinking

    ReplyDelete

 
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