And I Thought Twitter Was Bad!

March 4, 2010 by Sachiko | 1 comment

Just when I thought internet social networking couldn’t possibly get any more inane after Twitter, along comes Chat Roulette. You get a random video chat partner, and you have a next button to move you to another one. To keep your partner with you, you basically have to be more interesting than the next person. What this seems to amount to in practice is basically being as outrageous as possible—there doesn’t seem to be any real communication at all. Is this what people are really after with internet social networking—a freak show? Or is this a completely separate phenomenon? Is this a valid form of social networking at all? Could it even be called a valid form of entertainment?

Whatever it is, it seems to be taking off in a big way. It’s starting to get a fair bit of media attention, and no doubt it will attract a lot of venture capital—even though they’ll probably never be able to figure out how to make any money out of it. After all this time, Twitter still hasn’t figured out how to.


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    March 6, 2010 at 2:31 PM

    Swamp Rat

    Swamp Rat

    Sachiko, I never heard of Chatroulette until you mentioned it here so I went and checked it out. It seems like a fad, mostly for the under 25 crowd and I’d doubt it has long term viability. It IS pretty inane, hah!

    Personally, I think it’s just the “latest fashion craze” and isn’t a keeper. I can understand the draw of Facebook, especially if the user limits their acceptance of “Friends”. I haven’t gotten into the Twitter craze since I’m willing to wait to find out the latest happenings, most of which have little to no impact on my daily life. I don’t have an urgent need for information, right away, right now, and I don’t need to know what someone ate for breakfast this morning. I barely watch TV so I’m not really much of a media person.

    Yeah, making money seems to be the bane of the internet. Better to work up a site with a lot of traffic and then sell it for big bucks to one of the players and let them try to make money out of it. Most seem to have failed at that task.

      
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