By now everyone knows about the wild-west nature Chatroulette, where you are just as likely to be greeted by a guy playing guitar as you are thousands of naked people doing all sorts of bizarre stuff.

There are scores of clone sites which have tried to capture on the media frenzy surrounding Chatroulette, and now there is one more.

ChatVille is a brand new Facebook game that combines the best elements of chatroulette with the gaming and viral mechanics of apps like Farmville.

ChatVille let’s you video chat with random Facebook users in a safe environment while earning compliments, unlocking badges, and leveling up through positive experiences with other users. You can also video chat with all your Facebook friends for the first time ever right from the Facebook website and post screenshots of your ChatVille adventures to Facebook albums.

Your interactions are tied to your Facebook account under the hood so there are actionable consequences for inappropriate behavior. We’ve also developed a proprietary system for weeding out the bad apples quickly and permanently.

This is exactly what Chatroulette needs to clean up it’s act, but one has to wonder what happens when the experience is squeaky clean and tied to your Facebook account. Part of what makes Chatroulette so much fun is the breadth of experiences available on the site, ranging from the sublime to the disgusting and everything in between.

Steve Shapiro, CEO of Digsby says that Chatville was built by the same team that created Digsby, the desktop app that now helps more than 2.5 million users manage over 6 million IM, email, and social network accounts from one application.

Check out ChatVille on Facebook.

Related posts:

1. Chatroulette Brings in the Clones
2. Forget Twitter, Chatroulette Is The Hottest New Dating Site
3. RandomDorm: Chatroulette for the College Set

This week I’ve been talking a lot about how to prototype a dating site. Lots of companies will throw something up on White Label Dating or Dating Factory and if it takes off, start their own site. Other companies are even lazier and more clever. They create Google ads for a new site which is simply a landing page asking for an email address. If enough people sign up, they will launch the site.

Infomercials are the grandaddy of test marketing. Lots of them state “ships in 6-8 weeks.” This is supposedly because they run the infomercial, take the orders, and if they get enough they will actually create the product.

I’m not sure if this dating-based gaming site actually has a product or not, or if the site is really down, but it caught my attention.

In Dudes Can Pay Hot Girls to Play Online Video Games With Them, VentureBeat says:

If you’re a lonely gamer dude, then GameCrush might be your ticket to meet a hot girl.

That’s the basic pitch of this social networking service, where guys can pay cash to play hardcore video games with attractive females on the GameCrush site.

The site, which launched today, lets dudes view the profiles of “PlayDates.” The profiles say what the girls’ “turn ons” are and show their photos. If you find a girl you like, you can send her a game invite. If she accepts, you get six to ten minutes of one-on-one game time.

A speeddate session based on a game, great idea. This feels like it could be a cam-girl site where the female gamers get paid to play. If not, they should consider that. Lots of men would pay a few bucks to look at a pretty face while fragging each other in Call of Duty.

No related posts.

There is no more effective way to get a sense of someones tastes, preferences and personality than a five minute video chat. Only companies really doing anything with video are SpeedDate, which is getting north of 1.5 million visitors a month and the young kids are using Woome. I haven’t used SpeedDate in a while, it’s $30/month and crashed on me in the middle of a date and froze my browser. It happens, especially on my Mac with Flash, but $30 is still too expensive, especially if I want to try it out for an hour or so.

Today I checked out Chateoulette (Often NSFW). It’s a dumbed-down version of WooMe, just go to the website, turn on cam, and a random stranger is immediately looking right at you, doing just about anything, and I mean anything.

OPW has a post about Match launching an Andriod mobile application. There is another post about Skyecandy, which is videodating via Skype. This has been done 10 times over in the past and hasn’t gone anywhere. Maybe Skycandy has something new in store for us.

I wonder if/when mobile apps will support streaming video? As I’ve always said, an online speed-date with audio and video is the best way to figure out if you want to go on a first date with someone. Mobile apps should be able to implement video chats easily. At home, cams need to be built into a higher percentage of laptops for this to make a significant impact on the dating market. And then there is the issue with people’s behavior. Video tends to bring out the nasty in people.

OmniDate does an end run around this problem by using Flash-based avatars. It’s been around a few years now and I’m waiting to hear some positive results from companies using the service. There has been some research, but where’s the business-case ROI? Are people sticking around on dating sites longer, is there advertising baked into the experience (where the real money is for a startup), are better, more long-lasting relationships resulting from companies using the service?

My SpeedDate time just dinged, gotta go.

No related posts.

Last week I talked with Art Harrison at Randodate. Randodate offers a speed dating application which can be embedded in a dating site or social network, similar to IM/Chat applications like Topicfox and Toksta.

Enter Ning, the social network for social networks, which recently hit the 1 million networks milestone. Ning Apps was launched last week in order to provide social network administrators a directory of third-party services which can be easily embedded into Ning networks, often with only a few clicks. Mashable said:

Today, Ning is about to deliver some of that functionality to their 700,000 social network creators with Ning Apps, giving them more than 90 new toys — think apps like Qik, Twitter (Twitter reviews), Ustream (ustream reviews), Box.net, Tokbox, WordPress (WordPress reviews), Mailchimp, and PollDaddy — that they can use to enhance their individual networks.

Ning Developer’s have access to a handful of applications in the Dating category. One of those apps is Art’s Randodate, which has been rebranded as Speed Dating 2.0.

What sort of adoption rate can we expect for speed dating on Ning? It certainly can be used for meeting people on your networks, not only for dating.

No related posts.

SpeedDate has launched an Android application that offers portable, immediate and 24-hour access to the millions of singles engaged in online dating. By downloading the free application to your Android phone, users can leave their computer screens and be able to message dates throughout the day no matter their location. SpeedDate has an iPhone application as well.

Me no have Android phone, so no review. I’ll try to check out when I’m in NYC, someone I know must have an Android phone.

Cool to see that SpeedDate uses Facebook Connect.

No related posts.

Speeddate.com had two women going on speed dates for 24 hours on Valentine’s Day.

Sarah, one of the participants, had this to say about the experience.

It all began when I entered a contest on SpeedDate.com that a friend of mine saw that I might be interested in doing. It said they were looking for people to compete in a 24 hour speeddate marathon. I am a single girl which makes Valentines Day a not so fun holiday and thought why not? It seems like a great way to meet a ton of people, and it was! Also, living in NYC its so hard to meet people that are worthy of your time. As I am always working so hard, I am a freelance graphic designer so most of my day I spend at the computer. I knew it was going to be fun. So, I did it. You talk to people for 3 minutes and if you like them then you can chat with them for longer and if not, they go away and that’s it! It’s the perfect amount of time to talk to someone and figure out if you want to continue communicating with them. In a 24 hour period I went on 390 dates. It was worth it! I met so many new people. Its a great experience I recommend to those with short attentions spans and the freedom to choose your match!

390 dates. Can you imaging date number 350? Reminds me of the first time I tried face-to-face speed dating. After a few people you quickly learn to compress your introduction into 30 seconds and hope they do the same. By the 15th conversation you have it down to the bare minimum, name, age, location, interests, your turn. I go so bored during a few of the conversations I wanted to start making stuff up about myself. Hmm, perhaps an architect (Seinfeld fans will get this).

No related posts.

I received this email from Speeddate today. I am not exactly enthusiastic about meeting 52369, I prefer even numbers.

No related posts.

Dan Abelon wrote in to say that Speeddate has won the Blogger’s Choice in the Open Web Awards for the Dating/Romance category. Okcupid was the runner-up.

No related posts.

TechCrunch say that SpeeDate has hijacked over 500,000 Facebook users from other Facebook applications.

As far as we can tell, all three modified applications were developed by HappyAppy, so it’s likely that SpeedDate either acquired the company with the $6 million it raised last month or the two companies share the same development team. Users are being sent brief messages notifying them that their applications have been renamed and “improved”, but only after the switch has been made without their consent.

The three affected applications are:

* Have You Ever??? (353,217 monthly active users)
* Would You Rather (158,291)
* Romantic Gifts (28,164)

SpeedDate is growing but seems to have leveled off, we’ll see if the acquisitions continue to increase visitors. One this is for sure, acquiring existing Facebook apps is often cheaper than trying to get them through advertising.

This commenter sums up the situation:

Everyone wants users but bait and switch speaks to who you are and if you will do that what will you do with private conversations and user profiles. You are building a community of Trust with your members and when you pull a stunt like that then your members then have to worry about your ultimate intentions.

I’m sure SpeedDate has an explanation, hopefully Dan will chime in and help us understand their actions.

Related posts:

1. Facebook Growing By 600k Users A Day
2. SpeedDate Launches Android Application
3. SpeedDate Brings Real-Time Chat To iPhone/iPad

Online Dating Insider sponsor HonestyOnline is now providing identify verification to speed dating services.

FastLife.com, the world’s largest speed dating service, has partnered with Honestly Online Inc. to launch Prestige Speed Dating, designed exclusively for established singles concerned about the personal history of the people they date. Set to launch Thursday, September 25th in New York City, the innovative new format, which includes a state-of-the-art identity verification check, has already exceeded expectations in registration and enrollment.

The launch, to be held at Touch in Manhattan’s trendy Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen district, will cater to 20 qualified, singles — the country’s very first Prestige daters. To qualify as “Prestige”, candidates must consent to — and pass — Honesty Online’s detailed verification check. Once a candidate’s background has been qualified they may attend the upmarket Prestige Speed Dating events.

I take minor umbrage at FastLife’s claim to be the world’s largest speed dating service. Nonetheless, it’s great to see face-to-face speed dating service implementing verification checks. Can WooMe and SpeedDate be far behind?

Here’s how it works:

Using its proprietary system, Honesty Online only requires singles to provide their name, address and date of birth to verify the validity of their identity, after which singles are asked to answer a series of questions to confirm that the identity is truly theirs. The entire process — which is considered one of the web’s most accurate authentication programs — takes users only a matter of minutes to complete. For the launch event, Honesty Online will also preview a future offering — a credit check of all participants in Prestige’s launch event. In addition, FastLife will require each applicant to fax a copy of their business card reflecting their place of employment and their position within the company as well as submit to a telephone interview with a FastLife representative. Honesty Online will be providing a thorough employment and reference check in the next quarter.

So much for my fake business cards. Good to see Honesty Online continue to add to their core services.

Fastlife offers Prestige-level members their own personal consultants. A great example of that high-touch feeling missing from the online dating experience.

Press release.

Related posts:

1. Honesty Online Identity Verification Services
2. Review of identity verification vendors
3. Online Dating Fraud Detection and Identity Verification Services