But what distinguishes ChatRoulette was the use of webcams to allow users to randomly chat with each other without any registration or login; all what is required is just go to the website, accept to turn on the webcam and there you go.
The idea was fast to grow in popularity, it suffices to look at Google trends for the keyword “random chat” and note how the growth was exponential in a very short time. Notice the scale (between 10 and 20) in the graph below.
On the other hand the keyword “no registration chat” started to gain momentum since Q4 2008 with an index ranging from 5 to 8.
What does this mean?
Actually, it tells that internet users prefer easy to use website, especially for those who do not intend to make long lasting relationship. So the mysterious aspect of the randomness and the visualization of the other person have attracted people. The mere thought of “who might be the next person” gives the user a strong impulse to find what is hidden behind each click of a button.
However this comes at a cost. While in theory chatting with random people who might be from all over the world is appealing, the constant reflex of pressing the “next” button renders the experience completely useless. As a matter of fact you can rarely chat, because you are always driven by the feeling to know who is next. Besides the anonymous aspect of the service makes it open to all sort of “perversions”.
A small study
I decided to do a small study. So one early evening I opened ChatRoulette and tried for over 30 minutes to talk to someone. Then I repeated the same experience with Omegle.
Here is what I found. I will expose the Chatroulette statistics knowing that those of Omegle are similar. But first let me make some definitions that are useful to the understanding of the figures.
Appearance: is when something displays on my screen showing the peer, whether it is a man, woman, advertisement or anything else.
Repetition: when the same appearance shows more than once.
Pervert: a person showing explicit sexual act.
Video: a suspected recorded video for a person or others (not live broadcast).
Advertisement: a commercial announcement for a product or website.
So here are the results: During the 30 minutes I have seen around 200 appearances, 150 are men, among them 8 old people (look like 50 or above), 2 young boys (less than 15) and 62 perverts. There were also 20 appearances that were girls, 10 videos and 20 ads. The number of repetition was 55. The figures and their percentages are depicted in the table below.
| Total | Men | Women | Perverts | Videos | Ads | Repetition |
| 200 | 150 | 20 | 62 | 10 | 20 | 55 |
| 100% | 75% | 10% | 31% | 5% | 10% | 27.5% |
In addition to those statistics it is important to note that the longest discussion I had made was less than 30 seconds before the peer leaves. Those discussions occurred only twice and the remaining time it was the peer who is pressing “Next” on the spot.
As you can see, although I spent 30 minutes, I talked less than one minute.
This clearly shows that these sites are not result oriented; people go there either by curiosity, or guys searching for girls who are really rare species.
Moreover, most of the videos or ads were about adults websites. This means that these websites are starting to position themselves in a particular manner. As a result this will drive away most of the people who are looking for real experience.
For this reason I believe that it won’t be long before people lose interest in those services unless some others come to the market with a different strategy aiming to favor real communications that are ‘decent’ and containing more ‘values'.
You might want to check http://www.simpleconnexion.com/ for another approach on how to meet new interesting people based on a concept that delivers value.
chatroulette is the best service for random chat to strangers and others people and you can find solutions, it's so much interesting..
ReplyDelete