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I have a question for Hacker News. I started working on a website extremely similar to Chatroulette about three months ago (with a few interesting differences).

I have a question for Hacker News. I started working on a website extremely similar to Chatroulette about three months ago (with a few interesting differences). But I haven't finished it yet because I'm busy on other things in my life, I chose some wrong technologies to get started with, and I'm not the best developer in the world. Now that I've heard of Chatroulette, should I keep on going 'til I finish my project, or move on to the next thing? My biggest concern is that I thought the site would be so cool that traffic would grow exponentially from organic word of mouth. Now that there is a Chatroulette, I'm afraid it loses its wow factor. In fact, I can still think of some features that would lower the penis count and increase the usefulness/fun of the site. edit: Is this query too off-topic? Should I start another thread? Seemed like a good place to ask.

vaksel 17y ago
go for it...there'll always be competition, and Chat Roulette doesn't have the market penetration yet. Just figure out a way to differentiate yourself. 1. Better layout, make it a truly glorious experience...a few extra KBs to load an interesting background is nothing when you are streaming gigs of data. 2. Focus on the U.S. factor. That guy is trying to have the best of both worlds, but Germany is really not that close. So focus your service on U.S. and Canada and offer faster speeds. 3. Offer easy ways to share screen caps. I dunno something like a report where you show screen cap of person #1 and screen cap of person #2 + the actual text. Host it on your own server, so that people(reddit/digg) can just link to the chats in question.
- ewjordan 17y ago
  4. Some way, some how, get rid of all the dicks. Or at least try to make it opt-in, or figure out a way to ban/segregate repeat offenders. Seriously. Chatroulette may be a great idea, but when 20% of the users are trying to shock the rest of them (or are "legitimately" perving out on camera), it destroys the return visitor rate. I know plenty of people, including myself, that were initially interested in the site, but couldn't get past the gross factor.
neilk 17y ago
This advice is given on HN every day, guess it's my turn. - Competitors are validation of the idea. - The only way sites get the "wow" factor is through rapid iteration and contact with real users.
- jacoblyles 17y ago
  I guess I don't pay attention when other people ask the question. Thanks for putting up with my repetition.
- antileet 17y ago
  Last year, me and a friend built a chat application which would connect you to someone random. We had an impressive backend, and some really neat features including mining abuse reports to extract offensive conversations, etc. (Even considered applying to YC with this) A week before we were set to launch, omegle.com came out which was the same thing - simpler - but essentially the same. We abandoned the idea immediately because the internet was abuzz with omegle's brilliant concept, and we'd be seen as imitators and won't get enough people interested. One week, that's all we lost by. If I hadn't pushed for combing the site for security holes and writing in spam protection, over-optimizing the comet-server, etc, it would've been our site over there getting several hundred thousands of hits. This taught me the importance of releasing early and iterating and improving quickly. Still, every time I see omegle.com in the news or other sites, I feel sad that it could have been us, but I also feel proud that I came up with, and implemented an idea which would've worked nevertheless.
  - sorbits 17y ago
    “We abandoned the idea immediately because the internet was abuzz with omegle’s” I can’t help but read that as giving up at the first sign of trouble. Sure, competition sucks, but if you had just a single advantage you could have used the Omegle buzz to your advantage and effectively ride their coattail, what many tablets are presently trying to do with the buzz surrounding the iPad.
    - deleted 17y ago
nowthatwerehere 17y ago
You want an honest answer, Jacob? You're competing with a 17-year-old kid who made this web site for fun. I think you're taking yourself a bit seriously, and that's not a good thing. Are you having fun with making it? Make it, then. Make a damn good web site. If it's damn good, people will use it. You can make this a damn good web site, right? It's not going to be a shitpile? I'm asking seriously, not rhetorically. Generally quality is more important than anything; if you've got it, you're set. If you're not making it for fun, then frankly, I don't know why you'd have bothered to start in the first place. You don't think you're going to get rich off something like this, I hope. If you're learning something by making this site, you can still learn by making. Or did you do it just to see the results? Because you can see the results on ChatRoulette. If you think you can do better, stop asking us if a better product will be worth anything and start asking yourself if you can really do better. If it's better, in a way that people care about, they'll use it. If it's not, then nobody will even care enough to mock you. Are you doing something meaningful with your time? Answer honestly. If you are, then I can't see why you'd ask us anything of this sort. If you're not, then get yourself together and do cool shit. (Somebody who uses this site more translate what I said into Hacker Newspeak. Something something penetration adaptability futureexperience something tippingpoint gladwell rand.)
- jacoblyles 17y ago
  Thanks for your reply. You have a clarity of thought in your comment that is actually very helpful. I feel a bit foolish asking dumb questions sometimes, but it gives me an opportunity to learn from people with better thinking on a subject.
  - qeorge 17y ago
    Its not a dumb question, and I hope you haven't been discouraged from future participation. The advice you've been given here is excellent though. If I could add one thing, it would be this: In your first paragraph, you've already made 3 excuses about why you haven't released anything: - "I'm busy on other things in my life" - "I chose some wrong technologies to get started with" - "I'm not the best developer in the world" You've got to cut that shit out right now. Let this be the last time you got jumped on an idea because somebody else was working his or her ass off on it, while you were making excuses.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
petercooper 17y ago
Second comers to markets tend to do very well, since they can learn from the mistakes and the experiences of the innovator. Apple was hardly the first company to make an MP3 player, after all.. Look at fads in music for confirmation of this. Lady Gaga got big last year.. and now we have Ke$ha basically playing a similar card. Boy bands? Crap, when they come out, you end up with 101 boy band clones within a couple of years. Get in on the fad, but execute in a way that makes you distinctive.
- jacoblyles 17y ago
  Yeah, I think it would be more fun if you could limit it to a community. Say, people that come from the same referrer get joined to the same "room". Then people on hacker news could have a link and we could all talk to each other randomly, and other communities could do the same. Would probably get much fewer penises.
  - petercooper 17y ago
    I like your idea, but having spent a couple of days on ChatRoulette (and having seen the lack of success Seesmic has had in the blog comments sphere) I'm wondering whether there's really an appetite for video amongst strangers beyond seeing crazy/sick stuff or a gutter level of curiosity. Even if you play ChatRoulette legitimately, the number of people who will actually talk back to you is ridiculously low. You can get into typed conversations with people and they won't open their mouths a bit. People also seem OK with just staring at each other. It's like an awkward subway ride.
  - DanBlake 17y ago
    http://meet.tinychat.com/put-anything-here http://meet.tinychat.com/put-anything-here (check back in a few hours) Using nothing but the tinychat API to do it.
mynameishere 17y ago
edit: Is this query too off-topic? Obviously not. You seem to have an issue with self-validation. The most salient fact about chatroullette is that it is a piece of garbage. Find out why that is, then fix it, and put out your own service. Quick idea: Have "categories", like "weight lifting" or "chess playing" or "NASCAR fans", etc, etc. And then have timed quizzes to prove that people actually fit the category. Then they can talk to similar enthusiasts.
pbiggar 17y ago
The best way to do well with any "2nd" product is to fix important problems in the first product. ChatRoulette is not short of problems. Some people on reddit did a "study" where they found that some large percentage of "chats" were with masturbating men. Can you fix this? Probably. Add a check box saying 'show masturbating men' (I'm gonna say this should default to 'no'. Then when you end a conversation, allow a user to specific that they ended it because there was a masturbating man at the other end. As far as I'm concerned, ChatRoulette is unusable until this is solved.

vaksel 17y ago

go for it...there'll always be competition, and Chat Roulette doesn't have the market penetration yet. Just figure out a way to differentiate yourself. 1. Better layout, make it a truly glorious experience...a few extra KBs to load an interesting background is nothing when you are streaming gigs of data. 2. Focus on the U.S. factor. That guy is trying to have the best of both worlds, but Germany is really not that close. So focus your service on U.S. and Canada and offer faster speeds. 3. Offer easy ways to share screen caps. I dunno something like a report where you show screen cap of person #1 and screen cap of person #2 + the actual text. Host it on your own server, so that people(reddit/digg) can just link to the chats in question.

ewjordan 17y ago
4. Some way, some how, get rid of all the dicks. Or at least try to make it opt-in, or figure out a way to ban/segregate repeat offenders. Seriously. Chatroulette may be a great idea, but when 20% of the users are trying to shock the rest of them (or are "legitimately" perving out on camera), it destroys the return visitor rate. I know plenty of people, including myself, that were initially interested in the site, but couldn't get past the gross factor.

neilk 17y ago

This advice is given on HN every day, guess it's my turn. - Competitors are validation of the idea. - The only way sites get the "wow" factor is through rapid iteration and contact with real users.

jacoblyles 17y ago
I guess I don't pay attention when other people ask the question. Thanks for putting up with my repetition.
antileet 17y ago
Last year, me and a friend built a chat application which would connect you to someone random. We had an impressive backend, and some really neat features including mining abuse reports to extract offensive conversations, etc. (Even considered applying to YC with this) A week before we were set to launch, omegle.com came out which was the same thing - simpler - but essentially the same. We abandoned the idea immediately because the internet was abuzz with omegle's brilliant concept, and we'd be seen as imitators and won't get enough people interested. One week, that's all we lost by. If I hadn't pushed for combing the site for security holes and writing in spam protection, over-optimizing the comet-server, etc, it would've been our site over there getting several hundred thousands of hits. This taught me the importance of releasing early and iterating and improving quickly. Still, every time I see omegle.com in the news or other sites, I feel sad that it could have been us, but I also feel proud that I came up with, and implemented an idea which would've worked nevertheless.
- sorbits 17y ago
  “We abandoned the idea immediately because the internet was abuzz with omegle’s” I can’t help but read that as giving up at the first sign of trouble. Sure, competition sucks, but if you had just a single advantage you could have used the Omegle buzz to your advantage and effectively ride their coattail, what many tablets are presently trying to do with the buzz surrounding the iPad.
  - deleted 17y ago

nowthatwerehere 17y ago

You want an honest answer, Jacob? You're competing with a 17-year-old kid who made this web site for fun. I think you're taking yourself a bit seriously, and that's not a good thing. Are you having fun with making it? Make it, then. Make a damn good web site. If it's damn good, people will use it. You can make this a damn good web site, right? It's not going to be a shitpile? I'm asking seriously, not rhetorically. Generally quality is more important than anything; if you've got it, you're set. If you're not making it for fun, then frankly, I don't know why you'd have bothered to start in the first place. You don't think you're going to get rich off something like this, I hope. If you're learning something by making this site, you can still learn by making. Or did you do it just to see the results? Because you can see the results on ChatRoulette. If you think you can do better, stop asking us if a better product will be worth anything and start asking yourself if you can really do better. If it's better, in a way that people care about, they'll use it. If it's not, then nobody will even care enough to mock you. Are you doing something meaningful with your time? Answer honestly. If you are, then I can't see why you'd ask us anything of this sort. If you're not, then get yourself together and do cool shit. (Somebody who uses this site more translate what I said into Hacker Newspeak. Something something penetration adaptability futureexperience something tippingpoint gladwell rand.)

jacoblyles 17y ago
Thanks for your reply. You have a clarity of thought in your comment that is actually very helpful. I feel a bit foolish asking dumb questions sometimes, but it gives me an opportunity to learn from people with better thinking on a subject.
- qeorge 17y ago
  Its not a dumb question, and I hope you haven't been discouraged from future participation. The advice you've been given here is excellent though. If I could add one thing, it would be this: In your first paragraph, you've already made 3 excuses about why you haven't released anything: - "I'm busy on other things in my life" - "I chose some wrong technologies to get started with" - "I'm not the best developer in the world" You've got to cut that shit out right now. Let this be the last time you got jumped on an idea because somebody else was working his or her ass off on it, while you were making excuses.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

petercooper 17y ago

Second comers to markets tend to do very well, since they can learn from the mistakes and the experiences of the innovator. Apple was hardly the first company to make an MP3 player, after all.. Look at fads in music for confirmation of this. Lady Gaga got big last year.. and now we have Ke$ha basically playing a similar card. Boy bands? Crap, when they come out, you end up with 101 boy band clones within a couple of years. Get in on the fad, but execute in a way that makes you distinctive.

jacoblyles 17y ago
Yeah, I think it would be more fun if you could limit it to a community. Say, people that come from the same referrer get joined to the same "room". Then people on hacker news could have a link and we could all talk to each other randomly, and other communities could do the same. Would probably get much fewer penises.
- petercooper 17y ago
  I like your idea, but having spent a couple of days on ChatRoulette (and having seen the lack of success Seesmic has had in the blog comments sphere) I'm wondering whether there's really an appetite for video amongst strangers beyond seeing crazy/sick stuff or a gutter level of curiosity. Even if you play ChatRoulette legitimately, the number of people who will actually talk back to you is ridiculously low. You can get into typed conversations with people and they won't open their mouths a bit. People also seem OK with just staring at each other. It's like an awkward subway ride.
- DanBlake 17y ago
  http://meet.tinychat.com/put-anything-here http://meet.tinychat.com/put-anything-here (check back in a few hours) Using nothing but the tinychat API to do it.

mynameishere 17y ago

edit: Is this query too off-topic? Obviously not. You seem to have an issue with self-validation. The most salient fact about chatroullette is that it is a piece of garbage. Find out why that is, then fix it, and put out your own service. Quick idea: Have "categories", like "weight lifting" or "chess playing" or "NASCAR fans", etc, etc. And then have timed quizzes to prove that people actually fit the category. Then they can talk to similar enthusiasts.

pbiggar 17y ago

The best way to do well with any "2nd" product is to fix important problems in the first product. ChatRoulette is not short of problems. Some people on reddit did a "study" where they found that some large percentage of "chats" were with masturbating men. Can you fix this? Probably. Add a check box saying 'show masturbating men' (I'm gonna say this should default to 'no'. Then when you end a conversation, allow a user to specific that they ended it because there was a masturbating man at the other end. As far as I'm concerned, ChatRoulette is unusable until this is solved.