While Chatroulette is suffering from growing pains with some unplanned downtime, Woome has registered the domain name and launched ShufflePeople to pick up some of the slack.
Dating sites spend millions of dollars to get the amount of users that Chatroulette has acquired in a few months. Chatroulette goes down, and ShufflePeople steps in to deliver a similar service in the meantime. This is how the adult website market works, except they throw up new sites the next day to capitalize on something the competition is doing, or not doing.
The spiral of copycat innovation spins faster and faster. Some 17-year old kid has created the meme of 1Q2010 and now myriad companies are coming in to copy him and take a slice of the pie. Pretty soon AOL will start a similar site and we’ll move on to something else because Chatroulette was so last month. But for now, there is nothing bigger or more hyped.
Plenty of companies out there doing video dating wrong. Maybe, just maybe, a dating site will get it right after they deconstruct what Chatroulette is doing right. Lessons to be learned here people. Video is going to change online dating someday, but we’re nowhere near figuring out how it needs to work. I think I have, but it takes a new way of doing things and change is hard, especially in the online dating industry, which is still running on marketing strategies from a decade ago for the most part. Contact me if you’re in the mood to change the game.
Props to @Jonathan360 for the sleuthing. I received some Tweets from WooMe peeps but they failed to mention it was their site (marketing FAIL). Customized Fail Whale c/o Twitter. More at LA Snark.
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He David, it’s just a test site to see if the functionality plays with WooMe users, at which point we’d look to work it into WooMe site. it’s not meant to be a stand alone competitor to CR and will be taken down after test.
Stephen, WooMe
Only 297 users on this clone when I looked just now. Wondering what WooMe’s going to do if it gets big, throw up ads I guess.
Really looks a bit odd how WooMe didn’t want people to know it was theirs. Regardless, its a compliment to Andrey they copied everything about his, right down to the almost anonymous creator.
Anyway, there’s a couple more clones that have tried to be a little more creative – here’s a list I did this morning of the ones I’ve found so far: http://blog.eliotsykes.com/2010/02/23/chatroulette-clones/
Stephen, thanks for the clarification. Some of us were surprised that Woome people were promoting the site but not owning up to the fact that it’s a Woome test property.
You really haven’t tried this already? Your lawyers will love the concept I’m sure.
Eliot, don’t forget the blogs with the best-of photos like http://catroulette.tumblr.com/
Oh David I don’t think I can keep up with the best of chatroulette photo sites, there are so many, the clones are enough. I thought that ‘catroulette’ was a typo at first, someone’s also done chienroulette.com I saw in the CR facebook group, not quite up to catroulette’s standard yet though.
David, you never responded to my shufflepeople twitter account. LA Snark did, probably why he broke the story ;)
Veronica, appreciate the heads up on Twitter. However, I did respond less than 24 hours later with a question if it was a Woomee site but you didn’t bother to respond. Since it was the 5th copycat site I tried last week I gave it a shot and moved on.
ah touche! was it a dm? bc i didn’t see an @ reply but if i missed it then my faux paux
The chatroulette competitior has already arrived, http://vtring.com/
Seems Fun!
You’re the 10th Chatroulette competitor I’ve seen in a week. Might want to promote a site that actually works.
Vtring.com seems to work well right now. Interesting concept, could be Interesting if more people were on the site.
Shufflepeople, is generating good number of people.
Waiting to see if any of these new buds or even chatrouelette would last, or just fade away.
Guess time will ans.
Reminds me I’ve got a load of comments to moderate for the list of chatroulette clones I’m keeping – they just keep on coming. A lot of people out there hoping to be the Facebook to Chatroulette’s MySpace – I think they’re breeding.
Hi David,
I dropped you a line, but for other people checking out this blog, you may want to check out my site http://www.chitchattur.com . It is a ChatRoulette type site oriented towards online dating.
http://www.CamSkip.com
Like chatroulette, but with better features and filters! :)
Never heard of WooMe before. thanks.. great post
Spending time on Chatroulette is fun! I don’t even login to Facebook. Chatroulette feels like madness.
ANDREY TERNOVSKIY ON THE FUTURE OF CHATROULETTE
http://www.faceflow.com
this website has video chat / group video chat and has a pretty good random chat system implemented. i found their site from google who brang me on http://www.faceflow.com/chatroulette-alternative
The best new ChatRoulette has just girls. Try out ChatRouletteGirls
It’s fun & free so give it a try!
I ve been using http://nastyspace.com and I must say it is definitely a better alternative to chatroulette. I like the fact that it has more girls than guys, so I will give my props to nastyspace for adult chatroulette
I created a small similar website: chatocracy.com
There is a rating system so that in the end you should only talk to people you like.
I’ve give it a try on woome. Currently I have my profile on wantsmillionaire.com which is an upsacle millionaire dating club. I will check if which site will work better for me.
I think http://pitput.com is not that similar but is really really good
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