Chat Roulette

I hate talking about this site, but after Stephan introduced me to it, I have been obsessed by it. Something about 100% growth a day got me to pay attention.

[2/22/10 4:48:17 PM] Stephen: Geez, awesome idea.

Why didn't I come up with it?

http://www.ChatRoulette.com

Lots of freaks out there!

So this 17 year old kid in Russia can't find random people fast enough on Skype, he is in the NY times. I hear about the bubble CD girl, and Sticher; consider moving LiLAX to Google AppEng, to save on free hosting and scaling it, but mostly to learn about their cloud services.

However, after some time, I went on the site and decided I should shave and get a haircut, I was being nexted every second. This site sucks, however it is featured in the NYTimes and has a million dollar valuation on SiteLogr. Even has some imitators: the defunct Polish AnoChat, which is working again, but sparsely populated, I don't get nexted as much, and often will get reconnected to the same people. So I google chat roulette and find that Youtube has many videos including the Chat Roulette: Eye Vagina so I try to put the crack between to fingers up on the site and I don't get nexted as much, people find it entertaining, and don't quite know what they are seeing until they see me through the fingers and of course I get nexted, but not after getting a good laugh. At this point I want to build my own CR using Skype.

[2/28/10 12:19:53 PM] Stephen: I see there is an app in Ubuntu that lets you play video to a loopback driver for use as a fake webcam.

apt-get webcamstudio

it worked for the test

http://oldes.multimedia.cz/swf/mx-webcam.html

but I couldn't get chatroulette's flash app to use it ... maybe they hard-coded to exclude loopback, I don't know.

But thought I would share the alternatives to CamTwist (for Mac) and SplitCam (for Windows).

This skype conversation goes on for weeks. I keep returning to the SiteLogr graph, from Alexa and am stunned. It just keeps going, they now have P2P, the idea I was going to implement on Skype, another idea I didn't have time to complete. WSJ has CR by the numbers.

[3/2/10 2:08:08 PM] Stephen: http://omegle.com/

[3/2/10 2:08:58 PM] RalfX: chatrt without video. hmmm

OK I try Omegle:

You: hi

Stranger: hi

You: chatrt without video. hmmm

Stranger: ?

You: http://www.chatroulette.com/

Stranger: i know that site

Stranger: it is bullshit

You: however it used to grow 100%/day

Stranger: sure

Stranger: evebody shows dick on that site

Isn't as much fun without sound and video, just like the old IRC, how 80s.

[3/2/10 4:53:38 PM] Stephen: http://www.good.is/post/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-chat-roulette-but-were-afraid-to-ask/

[3/8/10 11:15:30 AM] Stephen: Guess what I did with my Sunday:

http://ChatRevolution.Posterous.com

This is the coolest video I found on CR:

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

and I spent some more time trying to engage people to talk:

You: How many oranges would it take to fill up that room?

Stranger: 9000

You: hmmmm

You: are you sure?

Stranger: yes

You: so 30x3x10=900

You: or 10x10x9=900

You: sorry no tits for you

Stranger: are you a man ?

You: u will never know

You: :P

Stranger: lol

Stranger: where ae youy ?

Stranger: are you

You: 6:06 am

Stranger: ouf

You: so if you wait until the sun raises, you could see

Stranger: but where?

You: however you could see another 1000 people until then

Stranger: i dont understand i'm french

You: hmmm, that is no excuse

Stranger: who are you ?!

You: hey I just heard France in http://twit.tv/natn128

You: which is the sound track

Stranger: an you where are you ?

You: in the bedroom

Stranger: but where is your bedroom ?

You: Je habit a Nice un anne et demi

You: 2nd floor

Stranger: on habite a coté de nice

You: wow

Stranger: et ouai the world is small

You: Gambetta 1996-97

Stranger: ok

Stranger: we go

Stranger: good bye !

You: ok

You: bye

Stranger: goog next

and then I went on to other distractions and work.