Chatroulette: A throwback to 90′s style internet randomness

Scott Leamon — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:00:13 +0000

Since December I’ve heard rumblings about this new one-to-one chat service. However, the chatter was so low I dismissed it as perhaps another social-media-wanna-be-the-new-facebook type of thing. Then a few weeks ago I saw a surge of discussion over Twitter and blogs documenting the beauty and the depravity of what is called Chatroulette.

Not familiar with Chatroulette? Ok, here’s the Cliff Notes overview. Basically, it is a peer-to-peer based chat system that pairs you with random people from all over the world. Nothing new, right? Wrong. Each random stranger has a webcam. The moment you connect you are face-to-face with a stranger or sometimes a puppet, or a sign and unfortunately too often – an occasional pervert. The beauty of the system is that you can move on to the next person in a split second by simply “Nexting” them. There’s no login, no identity—you can be anyone, or anything you want. You have complete control over the experience, as does the other user.

Chatroulette is not for everyone. And without doubt it is not a place you want children to be. It is unfiltered, unprotected and certainly not the controlled flavor of social media that we have grown accustomed to. Simply, it is random, it is chaos.

My first experience on Chatroulette was typical. The first face I ran across was some college kid – i assume – looking bored and likely a victim of several next hits. Well, I didn’t want to waste my first CR experience on this dude.

Ok… NEXT!!

Then I stumbled upon a guy playing guitar in Bronx, NY. We chatted for nearly 20 minutes. He had a great playing style and feel. It was very cool! I gave him a link to my music site and we have emailing each other since.

Moving on… BAMB – a pervert. Unfortunately, this is a very common thing. I’m still perplexed as to what motivates this behavior – so, I’ll leave it at that. After which I had a few great conversions with a graphic designer, a web marketer at a university and a darling girl with paraplegia. Overall, it was a positive experience. Minus the freaks.

In summary, Chatroulette is really nothing new. However, it reconnects us to the random aspect of the internet (IRC, AOL chatrooms, forums) that is all but forgotten in our current state of overprotected, sanitized social media channels. It goes against what we have been taught: “Don’t talk to strangers.” But strangers are sometimes interesting. And if not interesting, we are in control of the situation – simply hit NEXT.

Scared to to give it a whirl? Fine, here are a few videos from around the interwebs documenting the experience and a few moments of random brilliance.

• The Daily Show’s take on Chatroulette

• A movie about Chatroulette

• Merton, the improvisational piano chatter (no, it is not Ben Folds)

• Ben Fold’s live in concert – Ode to Merton

Photo by: mscaprikell

Can Twitter Kill SMS?

Scott Leamon — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:41:25 +0000

One could only hope. Why? First, allow me to rant for a moment about SMS, the biggest racket in the cellular phone industry, in my opinion. This particularly holds true for those of us already paying a monthly premium for unlimited data access. An SMS transmission is nothing more than data – packets, bits and bytes. Billshrink.com has figured that SMS is actually 412,500 timesmore expensive than, let’s call it, vanilla flavored data. Essentially, we are not paying for the bandwidth—we pay for the convenience.

With this secret knowledge, one can only assume this is why Steve Jobs and Co. avoided the implementation of MMS for two generations of the iPhone operating system. Their position: Why not just email a photo? You have unlimited data and a slick operating system! Don’t pay the man! Well, this ideal eventually crippled under pressures from customers that must interface with friends and family on ‘less robust’ smart phones. MMS support is now part of the forthcoming iPhone 3.0 operating system. +1 for the man.

Back to the topic at hand. Three days ago Apple rolled out an AP News application for developers to test the new Push Notification Service (another addition to OS 3.0). Briefly, this new service allows third-party applications to send real-time alerts to the end-user similarly to the functionality of Push Mail services like Microsoft Exchange and Blackberry Enterprise Server. For instance, you have notifications enabled in the Facebook app, a friend comments on your Wall, an instant notification is sent similar to a text message. Of course, I installed the application without hesitation. A few hours passed and I heard the subtle buzz that I was certain was an SMS message. Nope, the AP News app alerted me that Congress sent the credit card regulation bill to President Obama.

Immediately a light bulb went off in my head. I envisioned my favorite iPhone Twitter application (Tweetie) sending me notifications this way. Brilliant! A split second after my micro-epiphany the ideal was shattered by the realization that Twitter, in its current form, cannot deliver segmented messages. My modest following of 227 folks would be served up unfiltered like a synapse tap on the subconscious of a schizophrenic web designer. And my precious iPhone would turn into a noisy box of hate. My dreams of a useful Twitter are lost, time to point fingers.

Twitter, by design, is nothing more than a linear stream of 140 characters. In its current form you are unable to group, filter or segment follower’s tweets. Yes, some third-party applications like Tweetdeck used API hacks to accomplish this task, only to the detriment of your computer’s RAM and end-user sanity setting up the same groups on multiple machines and mobile devices. One can only hope this functionality is in the cards for Twitter’s future.

To axe SMS your Grandmother needs to be on Twitter, not just Oprah. She needs a phone service that “Comes with Twitter.” And, you need the ability to add Grandma to a “Friends and Family” grouping in Twitter so you can separate her from your geek tribe (who you also value dearly).

My Ideal world is coming together.

Grandma and my best (real-life) pals are in a group that is enabled to push notifications to my Twitter flavored phone of choice. My favorite basketball team is tweeting play-by-play updates and I can momentarily opt-in to the Push Stream and get live game updates. My latest (virtual) pal is live blogging from the latest and greatest conference I cannot afford to attend… you get the point!

If this were a reality today, I would immediately shave $120 off my annual phone expenses.

This idea is not outside the realm of possibility. The demographic of Twitter users is broadening by the moment. I cannot go a day without hearing a talking head on television direct me to their Twitter stream. As a communications tool, Twitter is here to stay. However, it overlaps with too many other services—SMS, email, instant messaging, Facebook Status’. Somebody has to go and I declare the inevitable demise of SMS.

scott leamon » Technology

Chatroulette: A throwback to 90′s style internet randomness

Can Twitter Kill SMS?