Febuary 2010, that's the time I heard of this website called Chatroulette . There was a post on the New York times that wrote about this Russian teenager who had built a website that by then had over 1 million hits per day. I went through the article to find out that it was a website about meeting people randomly by video chat. I thought that was cool, so soon enough I was on the website. Started it off and got "nexted" by a lot of guys, which was a good ego crusher and then I saw a couple of penises which wasn't pretty either. But at the time I didn't really think much of it. (just guys being creative).
When I fell on the few girls I met, most of them nexted me as well, which I didn't find fun. However after my first run I probably talked to 3 or 4 people meaningfully. I was a bit stupefied. I was like this is both pretty cool and pretty crazy, so I stayed an avid user of Chatroulette for the next 3 months. Sometimes when I didn't want to go out on Fridays I would stay home and Chatroulette till 1am and then go to bed. It was funny the effect Chatroulette had on friends. I would read my facebook feed and see girls dressing up just to look good on Chatroulette. That's the effect Chatroulette had at the time.
My best moment on Chatroulette was probably the day I nexted onto Ashley Tisdale. It was pretty exciting that first, celebrities where on it and that secondly I was actually talking to one at the moment. It was amazing to see how connected the world had felt from this. It made my head go spinning for a bit.
But like every good thing, Chatroulette downfall was the penis problems. With the increasing popularity, more and more exhibitionists came on to the website to show off their stuff. The more they came on, the more people were turned off and dropped off the bandwagon. Their final blow came in August when they shut down the website for a few weeks to release a new version. People moved on and since then they have never gotten back to they past fame.
So was Chatroulette a huge flop ? Some may say yes but in general no. Here's why. Chatroulette has brought our attention to a new age of social networking which is real time social networking. Just from using video chat, they used a technology which everyone have been waiting for to become really mainstream. Something skype is the only one able to scratch the surface. With video chatting you can talk and see the person you are interacting with. But still it has never been able to go as mainstream as im chatting or social networking. Skype today has over 600 million accounts but not in 10% use it as the main tool for communication. Carriers still make billions of dollars on communication when skype and many others allow you to call for free or almost.
Also Chatroulette scratched a surface of actually meeting people from the comfort of your computer. Before connecting with someone online it was by im chatting and by looking at their pictures or taking the traditional method of going out. Chatroulette allowed users to meet others actually online and have a conversation. It was awkward but it was a start and it can only get better with technology advances.
With websites building up on this real time social networking it will lead to new technological niche. First off an age where you can meet and talk with people at the instant instead of the passive way social networks of today behave. A short summary will be you log on, then you decide to make some new friends from say your college. You then start meeting some new classmates like you would in a club but just behind your computer, you connect real time and build the friendship straight there, actively and not passively. You can build your network in real time. Sharing will be in an active real time form, like google + hangouts is doing. You find a music you like, you listen to it with all your friends actively and comment actively. I mean there is so much more possibilities with live video social network that today social networks can't handle. Watching events not like ustream but like you would really do at a bar or so.
Thats why I think Chatroulette is scratching the surface of something that could soon become huge. Video chat today is still unfortunately an underwhelmed tool today, used mostly by the sex industry and the skype users, when it has so much it can offer. Its good that a few websites are working on it, like google+ and their hangouts, tinychat and Video chat rounds. Apart from the chatroulettes and the omegles, there is also new player that I really find interesting as well, which is ViDoBounce. You may keep an eye on them, they amalgamate skype, chatroulette and tinychat in a great mix.http://vidobounce.com
So its clear that live social network could be the next age which will push the limits of social networking to another barrier.
No comments:
Post a Comment