Taking Chat Roulette out for a spin!

I recently wrote an article about how social are we on social networks. A few days later I came across an article in the local newspaper about a site called chat roulette. Intrigued I decided to check it out. The site takes a new spin to the age-old chat room. Instead of connecting to a room of people, you spend your time randomly connecting to one person or other. If you like what you see, start chatting. These chat sessions are completely anonymous and meaningless! It is like running into someone at a local coffee shop. A fleeting glance and you are gone.

 A little reading around on the internet and I was amazed to realise that this site is supposedly the invention of a 17 year old. If so, you have to hand it to him for originality to say the least. Think of chat roulette as the internet’s answer to speed dating. Combine that with the speed of the internet means that your average speed date is going to last a mere seconds.

If anyone ever had, any doubt that we live in a shallow world that judges everything by appearances this site is definitely proof! As an advertising professional, the age-old truth bares its ugly head here. It is all in the packaging! The site uses Flash’s ability to capture streaming video from your webcam.  Though minimalistic in design, the site does what it is designed for.  Yet the site is definitely in demand with it being barely able to cope with the load.

Is it a way to meet new people and network online? Only if you believe in serendipity and the odds of that happening are quite rare! Chances are you will just get a cultural snapshot of the thousands of weird people that habit the internet. However, I did run into a student studying avionics with the US Air force and managed a decent tete a tete with him. The other person who seemed interesting got disconnected due to a bad connection. This does seem to be a problem with the site, or probably a testament to its popularity. The site can be quite slow at times. The same person mentioned Omegle to me. I didn’t quite get it at the time. The next day I was curious about how unique this concept was. I came across a few interesting articles and mention of Omegle, which is chat roulette without the webcam. The articles included one about why Chat roulette was worth a try and even an insightful one by the associated press.

What chat roulette does do though is make some of us become innovative with a webcam. I have seen people in V for Vendetta masks, fish tanks and a person who was keeping score to see if anyone would turn their head to see the message he had scribbled on a pad. There was even one camera focused on the person’s computer screen. Something like looking into a mirror. My creative contribution was to prop my Optimus Prime next to the web cam and have him point at the camera. It did get one or two favourable replies :D

Shazam - The Sound of Music to Marketers Ears

Here’s another one for all you music lovers out there. My colleague Sayed proudly whipped out his Apple i-phone to introduce me to a music identification service known as Shazam. Shazam provides downloadable widgets to cell phones that allow you to search music album information on the go. Imagine yourself listening to a song while at a music store and liking it but not knowing the artist is. Now with Shazam all you need to do is record a clip and viola album information at your fingertips. Available for Apple i-phones, i-touch iPods, BlackBerry it is now even available for Ovi by Nokia.

The service is pretty impressive. All it takes is for the phone’s built in mike to record a part of the clip. The widget then connects to the internet and searches an online database for a match. This service is no new kid on the block having been launched back in 2002. Already Shazam has a social networking model built into it being connected to Facebook, allowing you to share songs with friends and an e-commerce angle that allows you to purchase songs online.

What could be interesting if advertisers could tie up certain advertising jingles with downloadable offers / advertisements? Imagine you are listening to the radio and an advertiser plays a jingle which he records to his phone. Or you are walking through a mall and the in store jingle has discount offers embedded in them for first five downloaders that hour. And that's just the tip of the Iceberg, envision musical treasure hunts across retail chains for starters, the possibilities are limitless.

Using a service like Shazam the phone sends the person’s phone number to a database as an interested user and provides the users with some downloadable content – jpeg image, discount coupon or whatever. For now Shazam is yet another exemplary example of bridging the gap between mobiles and internet.