Chatroulette, a website that connects random strangers via video chat, has been receiving a lot of buzz. And we’ve seen it can be quite entertaining. Web-based chat startup TinyChat is launching their own version of Chatroulette, called TinyChat Next.
Similar to Chatroulette, you can be thrown into a room with strangers and conduct video chats with random people. When you tire of a person, you can simple move onto the next available user in TinyChat’s “Lobby”. It’s a fairly simple interface and idea, as we’ve seen with Chatroulette.
One differing factor is that TinyChat is trying to white label the technology by offering “rooms.” So for example, TechCrunch could create a room for entrepreneurs to chat about technology and meet random people who share the same interests. The idea is that if you can break down the chat topic by subject matter, the greater the chance of having a more compelling conversation with an absolute stranger. Similar to creating a a group chat on TinyChat, a room organizer would post a link to the room. People who join will randomly chat with other people in the room and can choose to skip to another stranger. PopJam also released a Chatroulette-like platform, except that is uses Facebook Connect to randomly send you into a Facebook IM chat with a total stranger.
At the moment, TinyChat Next is free to all users, even if you create designated, branded rooms. It seems like Chatroulette is a bit of a novelty that could wear off, but I think the idea of creating rooms according to subject or interest is compelling. It should be interesting to see if TinyChat can actually recruit users to test out and experiment with the service.
TinyChat, which recently upgraded its features, has been growing like gangbusters and recently won a Crunchie for best bootstrapped startup. TinyChat started out as a simple IRC-style chatroom app to complement conversations on platforms like Twitter, has been steadily building out its innovative platform to include video chat and screensharing options, live video streaming, and Facebook Connect.
Don’t mean no harm here… but isn’t a bit weird? I mean, what if a pervert just tries to shows his tiny thing… Random video chats? Really?
LOL seems you haven’t tried it. It’s a dick sampling site, all the way.
Well, that’s what I feared….
Tinychat, the place where Tinydicks reside.
wait…they just copied chat roulette? that’s real innovative..
Porn
Haven’t used Chatroulette but it is clear that you can be brutal and instantly hit the ‘next’ button if you don’t like someone’s face (or cock) and not feel guilty about it. With ‘groups’ I would imagine that you would feel obliged to stay and chat for a while, no matter how boring the other person.
Man, all of this tech news coverage on ChatRoulette is turning it to even more of a sausage fest that it was before.
I think this is here to stay. For 48 hours.
Blatantly ripping off the site of a 17 year old kid is disgraceful. Maybe Tinychat should try to think of an original idea instead of stealing.
yes i agree. so uncreative, all they do is steal ideas. it’s actually really sad if you think about it.
GOOOOO CHAT ROULETTE!
PopJam is a feeble attempt at riding the “random chat” wave. Incredibly feeble. A much better site, Omegle.com, precedes it and has thousands of users. It seems ridiculous for a site like TechCrunch to not have mentioned the larger, established site and to continue talking about a site that literally has five users on as I type this.
So a going nowhere company called TinyChat is copying the idea of Chatroulette conceived by a pretty brilliant 17 year old. Although cool and a bit novel, Chatroulette doesn’t have a business model underlying it nor was it conceived to have one.
Another bandwagon lemming of an entrepreneur who really has nothing innovative to contribute but just tried to jump on the flavor the week. While you’re at it TinyChat, throw in some hyper-local, real-time, semantic cloud based solutions to make sure you’re capitalizing on all the latest stuff that seems to be en vogue now.
Just cuz it is easy to build doesn’t mean you should build it.
TinyChat – Fail.
If it could be more focused on the “group” part (by directly dropping people into a group chat) it may have some merit.
Currently, however, I have to agree with Chris S. in stating it’s current state of ‘obvious ripoff’ is, well, quite disgraceful (a site which, within this past month, reached the 10k active users mark for the first time, nonetheless — at least Microsoft waited for Plurk to get popular before cloning it).
well it’s a great service then.but using video is consuming too much bandwidth.for me it’s better to still use IM to meet strangers.
lol the guys behind tinychat are so original. stealing from a 17 year old. must be tough to be original though..
lol, tinychat; whats your competitive advantage?
‘to steal idea’s & continue being unoriginal’
they’re probably reading this, hope they realize how uncreative & unethical they are, specifically the ceo. cant blame coders…too much
tinychat copycat. c’mon it’s so german …
RETIRED–TAUGHT MANY STUDENTS HOW TO WIN PLAYING CRAPS–BEEN ON THE WEB SINCE 1998–NEED SOMEONE WITH A LARGE EMAIL LIST
WILL PAY $100 FOR EVERY STUDENT I PERSONALLY
TEACH FROM THE LIST–dadiorlouie@earthlink.net
LOUIE
chatroulette is ok. Haven’t tried the tinychat thing yet. For my part I prefer FaceBuzz. It’s the same thing except it’s faster and has a porn filter! If you get tired of getting dicks on your screen you should check it out!!
chatroulette like sites:
timetotag.com/siteslike/chatroulette.com
The chatroulette competitior has already arrived, http://vtring.com/
Check it out!