“Making Friends”, now has an altogether too different a meaning, thanks to the virtual world we are living in more than ever. I thought friends happen, but that is the conservative, old timer me. Now, the young fellas go all out and “make” friends. If friends are a good thing, then “making” friends should be good too!
Your wish is my command, says the ever evolving internet. Community has a need, or a need can be created for the community, internet comes to the rescue. Many young fellas (and the old too), unknown to each other hitherto, become friends, lovers, married couple or, yes, one-nighters too, thanks to dating sites and online chat programs. What you see on ones face is not what he/she is underneath. Virtual mode of communication encourages people to shed their inhibitions and share their darkest secrets. Numerous strangers are collaborated on a single platform, each with his/her own profile of age, gender, photos, location, helping people select one another. With evolution, one could text chat in real time with each other. It was a time of ASL as the opening line! The simple text chat was augmented with voice and then video.
Webcam revolutionized the concept of online collaboration. It enabled the virtual collaboration to become next only to “in person” collaboration. One could see, hear and talk to the other person. May be one day will come when one can touch the other! Yahoo Chat was perhaps the most popular chat service until recently, which enabled people to conduct webcam chat, besides of course simple chat. But its eminence was challenged recently by a 17 year old Russian boy Andrey Ternovskiy. In November 2009, he wrote a simple program within just 2 days that merged the concept of Roulette into chat, aptly named Chatroulette.
In previously existing chat systems such as Yahoo Chat (Now Yahoo Messenger), one had to be given permission to watch ones webcam and more often than not this permission was not given. Through Chatroulette, Andrey Ternovskiy turned the concept on its head and made the system assign a chat partner chosen randomly by the program. Should one of the partners in a pair not like the pairing, he/she can simply go to the next partner, until he/she gets the right partner. The partner ditched becomes nexted. It became an instant hit in the community, particularly with guys who have been trying to break into a girl’s webcam with a single minded determination! If there is 1 woman for every 5 men, chances are that you end up in a woman’s webcam every 5 nexts. You have given yourself at least a chance to be seen.
Blindcamdate chatroulette (blindcamdate.com) is a Chatroulette alternative. It is just like Chatroulette.com in most aspects, but doesn’t block one without a valid reason. It connects two random persons through webcams, where they can text chat each other or just talk through the mic. If they don't like the person on the other end, just press next and each will be paired with another random person. It also features multichat and a chance for implementation on own site.