We Are Organized Chaos

Chatroulette Improv Wars

The last few weeks have seen an explosion of viral videos that center on Chatroulette ‘improv’.  The interactive video conferencing format of Chatroulette makes this a perfect breeding ground for up and coming bands and musicians to get their 15 minutes of fame.   For instance, rock band I AM UN CHIEN recently performed a live music video on Chatroulette.

But I think we’re just beginning to see the start of the ‘improv wars’ on Chatroulette with the first battle between Alex Roda (the original improv) and Merton (the piano improv).  Alex Roda was first to hit the scene with his improv vocal video which to date has approx. 135K views.  Following that was Merton’s piano improv video which has exploded onto the scene with over 3.3 million views on YouTube in less than 10 days.  Alex Roda then released his second improv vocal video ‘live’.  Naturally, viewers have taken sides in the comments which has further fueled the fire.

Personally I think both videos are great and show the power of real-time interactive video conferencing which is in it’s infancy. Marketers are still trying to figure out how to best use (i.e. exploit)  Chatroulette for marketing purposes (The French Connection promotion aside) but my guess is one brand is going to latch onto one improv artist sooner rather than later to tap into non-stop Chatroulette buzz. I’ve embedded both original videos below and you can judge for yourself which chatroulette improv performer you like better..

ALEX RODA (Auto-tune Vocal Improv)

MERTON (Piano Improv – updated version; original pulled due to TOS from YouTube)

UPDATE: BEN FOLDS (Tribute to Merton). This just happened last night at a Ben Folds Five concert in Charlotte where Ben Folds did his best Merton impression for the concertgoers while live on Chatroulette.  Amusing given that people seem to think that Merton/Ben Folds are the same person…

Facebook + Chatroulette = Faceroulette

It was bound to happen sooner or later.  Someone took Facebook Connect functionality and mashed it together with Chatroulette’s video conferencing interface.  So now you have Faceroulette! The only problem? Nobody seems to be using it quite yet.  It remains to be seen if the whole appeal of Chatroulette is in the anonymous nature of the service or if services like Faceroulette, Redditroulette, Tinychat and others can gain traction in the marketplace with detailed and niche user options.  Could Facebook will be rolling out a similar feature to Faceroulette sometime in the immediate future?

Did Chatroulette Just Launch The Interactive Video Conferencing Boom?

Note: This originally ran on 2/25/10  as an Op-Ed in AdAge.  You can view that article here.

The numbers don’t lie.  Live Video Conferencing / Streaming is on an explosive growth trajectory.  Consider some recent stats below:

• Tiger Woods Live Ustream broadcast had 683,000 streams
• Myspace / Ustream live premiere event for Alice in Wonderland had 400,000 streams
• YouTube / U2 concert drew over 10 million streams

So the numbers above show that there is avid consumer interest for broadcasts that happen over the net, in realtime and streamed.  But what of Interactive Video Conferencing? Though the events above offer social media integration they aren’t ‘true’ interactive video conferencing events.  To date, most of these livestream broadcasts allow people to chat with one another about the event as it’s happening or to pose questions that a moderator will ask the subject of the livestream itself.  But is this true ‘interactivity’? I would argue a definitive no.

Skype and live 1-to-1 video conferencing systems offer interaction between connected hosts in a live, connected video feed.  So there’s already an inherent difference between the current examples of  ‘livestreams’ and the systems in place for ‘video conferences’.  Conferences being the keyword that implies basic live video interaction between stream members.  But, apart from making headlines on Techcrunch or Mashable, most videoconferencing and livestreaming hasn’t achieved a level of critical mass adoption yet.

Twitter was the catalyst to help microblogging explode onto the scene and even went so far as to create an ecosystem around it – url shorteners, service clients (Tweetdeck, Seesmic) and so on.  Similar patterns are emerging with the recent massive growth Chatroulette is experiencing.  Part of this is due to curiosity (like every new trend) but I would wager that Chatroulette itself has just become the catalyst for interactive video conferencing and will accelerate adoption of video conferencing  by the masses.

Here in no particular order are a few stats on the webcam and videoconferencing ecosystem:

• Markets for webcams at $1.8 billion in 2008 are anticipated to reach $3.2 billion by 2015.  You can see by this stat alone that by 2015, most new computers should be webcam ready or have an integrated webcam installed.
• As of March 2009, 40% of video uploads on Facebook were via webcam.  I would guesstimate that by now this number is in the 55-65% range as webcam usage has most likely continued to gain traction on the Facebook platform.
• Gartner predicts that 200 million people will pay for desktop videoconferencing by 2015.  I’m not sure how pay is being defined since it will be extremely hard to change current consumer mindset as Skype and like services are either ad-supported or free to use for video conferencing.

Note: Chatroulette is a new video chat service that can be very NSFW (Not Safe For Work).  It is suggested you read here before going to the site so you know what to expect.

So these are ‘official stats’ but what of Chatroulette?  Since the service has only been out a few months, there’s not much in way of official stats but here’s what I’ve been able to dig up or have seen after using the service:

• Traffic has almost doubled in a week from 20,000 concurrent users on 2/13 to almost 40,000 on 2/20
• Approximately 75% of users seem to fall into the 18-24 age group.
• Though there is still quite a bit of obscene content, it seems to have diminished ratio wise with the larger traffic numbers.  Maybe more ‘normal’ people are starting to use the service
• An ecosystem around Chatroulette is already developing.  The 1st out of the gate – software that allows you to modify your live video stream.  Manycam is one such system which allows for Augmented Reality-like features such as applying animations to your face through facial tracking.
• The most important observation – clones of the service are already appearing in record time – Redditroulette, Tinychat and others.

So what Chatroulette has shown is that there is definitely consumer interest in and a market for interactive video conferencing – especially with the Gen Y demographic.  This is not surprising as both Gen Y and Gen Z are demographic sets that will be growing up with these types of interactive systems in place (similar to initial text based chat systems that were in place for Gen X.)

Furthermore, Chatroulette has shown that a simple UI and Flash based video conferencing system can work – efficiently and effectively.  This probably isn’t good news for startups and tech companies that have been trying to sell 5-6 figure teleconferencing platforms and systems to businesses. Expect to start seeing ‘generated backlash’ against the Flash-based technology even though the genie is already out of the bottle.

Finally, this recent surge in traffic with Chatroulette shows that desktop based video conferencing only has room for growth.  As adoption grows, we’ll also see more advanced uses of video conferencing which include more advanced interactivity.  This is the main reason we developed ZugSTAR technology to allow Augmented Reality based interactivity between video streams.

In summary, it remains to be seen if Chatroulette itself is a fad or the next Twitter.  However, what is has shown is that interactive video conferencing is here to stay and is positioning itself to be the de facto method of communication very soon.

Any comments, hit me up on Twitter @kobrakai or leave comments below.