An interesting trend I realized on New year’s eve with video chat

It’s 2012 and we are into a brand new year with probably super cool things coming up. Well mounting up to 2012 we know most people head out to city squares or clubs to go spend the new year eve. Well for me, it was a pretty chill one as I stayed at home because I had my mom and sister over. So with that I decided to use my laptop to check up what everyone else was up to. After a couple of minutes spent on twitter I decided I might as well check some video chat websites like tinychat and co to see if people were actually on it spending their New year’s eve. To my surprise there were so many people spending the eve on tinychat, creating more and more groups for anyone to spend the eve with them. The same went on for the other websites I checked out like omegle, chatroulette etc. That’s when I asked myself what if in 10 years 90% of us spent our major events online like this.

So when I got on Tinychat, they were over 100,000 streams going and the stream count kept on increasing. I decided to join a stream that was trending on the home page. Actually I have always been a lover of tinychat and I love watching and spying the fun streams. The stream I joined that night was full with all the 12 cam spots filled and people coming and going which everyone happy new year. It was kind of fun especially that people would argue that most people that will do such a thing are “losers”. Most people looked like the pretty normal kid in your history class. Most of the streamers told stories, flirted with each other and hanged out while waiting for the new year to come while staying on Tinychat which I thought was pretty awesome, hanging out with total strangers 5 minutes prior to spend a moment like this.

So I spent a few more minutes on tinychat and decided to later on hop on omegle and chatroulette to see if people where random chatting on new year’s eve as well. Well like I thought there where over 25000 people online on each service. I logged in and most of the people I bounced on where either screaming or wishing me a happy new year.  It was also cool to see that most people where in groups so it was more like connecting various groups of friends from around the world on omegle wishing each other happy new year.

So after visiting a couple of more video chat websites I really was impressed by the number of people that were actually online spending the 31^st and the 1^st online, on camera and mostly with strangers. So I thought to myself, what will it be in the next 10 years? Will more people spend events like this online with their friends and other strangers from around the world or physically? What do you think ?

Will more and more people hangout online rather than offline in the future ?

Technology has made it easier for people to entertain themselves on their own and restrict them from the need of actually going outside. When TVs came out in the early 50’s people could stay more and more at home and watch shows and movies on their little box and skip on the opportunity of going to the dance. After TVs came computers that kept more and more people at home as they could now play games, write stuff as well as watch their TV. When the internet came out people could now interact with fellow internet users online through forums, chat rooms and more recently social networks. They can also discover and listen to music or watch new movies, taking more and more time out of physical interactions which people were so used to before?

 

Before all these technological advances people would interact physically most of the times. They would hangout with their friends to spend time and that was how it was. However now with a video chat craze looming do you think people will start spending more of their time online then offline ? Video chatting websites today allow users to meet new people and talk with them, group video chat with their friends and call their family. With progress it would be better and more used and I know from my experience on New year’s eve that many people spent their eve on websites like tinychat or omegle.

 

So what do you think ?

Why celebrities should use video chat more

Celebrities have always been a subject of huge interest from us fans. Before the technological progress we have made today, celebrities were mysterious people we didn’t know too much about but whom we loved and revered. We would only get to see them during their public appearances or when they addressed us in public. However technology has made it easier to get to follow their everyday moves. Bloggers get to post pictures of them with their fellow readers and get the scoop of their latest antics. Added to that, websites like twitter and facebook have allowed celebrities get a more personal voice as they can actually have conversations with some of their fans, something that wasn’t really done before. However with video chat, celebrities will now be able to have more personal conversations and connections with their fans and get to make their fanbase much more active. With video chat flourishing these days, I think it’s time celebrities start using it more.

 

Now if we consider what social media has done for celebrities of today you might see the impact interactions with fans have on their appeal. It is no surprise that stars that tweet the most have the most active fanbase and those that have the most active fanbase are those that tweet the most. When you interact with your fans you build connection with them and they feel closer to you. You allow your fans to share some great moments with you. Justin Beiber for example built most of his empire as a social media freak who took earlier to twitter and myspace to continuously interact with his few fans in the days to help him become to the pop idol he is today. Due to the way it increases their fanbase, appeal and marketing power, more and more celebrities are turning to social media websites to interact with their fans.

 

With that said I think that to take this fan-celebrity interaction to the next level, video chat will be that step. With video conversations with fans, fans will be able to actually talk to their favorite stars, ask them questions and pass some great time with them. That will absolutely make their fan base much more loyal. Fans will feel a great connection with their stars and it will definitely please them to be able to talk to the people they have revered so much.

 

Video streaming websites like ustream and livestream have been increasingly used by stars. Once in a while they would schedule a video stream with their fans and answer questions on video while their fans im chat to interact with them. It’s pretty cool in the sense that more than twitter at least you can see your idol talk and answer some of the questions you have.

 

However it is still a one way conversation and it gets boring for both fans and celebs to talk to a screen. It’s for that reason that stars don’t do it that much due the kind of interaction it is. For that reason they should switch more to video chatting. More and more interesting video chatting platforms are coming out like google+ hangouts or tinychat which will allow them to actually talk with their fans. The conversations won’t be one way anymore and you can bet your dollar that it is going to be much more fun and revealing. A few have already started doing it like the Black Eyed Peas, Britney Spears Justin Bieber, Jaden Smith etc and it is pretty obvious that it’s for actions like this that the above personalities are some of the most relevant stars today.

 

Video chatting with fans will be great for both parties, it’s fun, it allows you to build a bigger fanbase and pass a good time. So it’s time for more celebrities to use it.

Mobile carriers are not safe and here’s why

The smartphone age that helped to skyrocket the earnings of mobile carriers may soon be the tool to destroy it. With smartphones, carriers are now able to get their customers hooked up much more pricier voice and data plans that cost mostly over $60 per month. Also due to the price of smartphones, carriers can get us stuck to long term contracts to subsidize the price of smartphones.

 

Now I won’t dispute if $60 is worth the service or not. Being an owner of a smartphone, I do want data on my phone to use all the apps on it as well as calling and texting. So I won’t complain about that, however I would comment that there is one little feature that may disrupt the business of mobile carriers in the future. That little feature is an upcoming trend called video calling.

 

Today on our smartphones, a few apps allow us to video call our friends for free mostly in great quality video calls. They include skype, tango, fring, google talk, viber just to name a few. All you have to do is go on the app store and download these apps and add your friends so you can call them whenever they are online. An app like viber doesn’t even need you to be online, it runs in the background and with that whenever a viber contacts, you then receive the call that easily. No effort needed. That is really super cool and with more and more apps it won’t be too long before these apps should take a toll on mobile carriers’ dollars.

 

The reason why now they really don’t have weight against mobile carriers today, comes down to the number of people that have smartphones, the operating systems these phones use and also and mostly importantly the number of people that use these apps and have their friends using it.

 

It is said that now about 50% of the US population owns a smartphone. That is a great number however with differences in smartphones, they have different operating systems. If you have webOS or Symbian you will probably lack quality apps to allow you video call your friends however it is also true that most smartphones coming out these days is either in Android iOS or BBOS which do have quality video calling apps. As they number of smartphone owners increases it will give much more weight to video calling apps.

 

The main obstacle these apps are actually facing is the number of people using it and the number of friends they have using it. I personally have a few video chat apps on my phone and I really do lack contacts on them. For that reason I rarely use it. With more and more video calling apps coming out, it will fragment the members using it and thus you will never get enough contacts on one app to substitute your normal phone calls with calls using the app. If there could be 1 or 2 major players that could get enough following that most of your friends where using it, then that could become scarier to carriers. People won’t use their airtime minutes anymore and people reducing their plans drastically. Also if apps like viber allowed you to make cheap calls too, instead of only just allowing you to make free calls to your contacts, that would also be interesting. If google talk free calls could be on smartphones, that would be much more awesome (I have never understood why it’s not on the google talk app on phones)

 

The fact is that with time, in the next 2-3 years (even before) there will be a video calling app so awesome that most people will be using and most of your friends will be contacts on it so you could call them for free. When that time comes, what will mobile carriers do? Most of these apps also allow you to send free text messages as well to your contacts so people won’t need airtime minutes and texting anymore from carriers and we are talking about the short run. So plans that were $60 will turn to around $30 because phone users will only want data on their phones.

 

Then in  the long run when wifi becomes available almost everywhere or video calling apps build their own data networks and allow us to use it, what will mobile carriers become then? Most people will drop the contracts and get phones and just install a video calling app that will allow them call their friends for free. If I were a CEO of a major mobile carrier, then I will start preparing backup plans for the future. The bright side for mobile carriers today, is the fact that one, they are the only one now that allows internet to be reached by most areas since their pass their data across the phone wires. Their second advantage is that there hasn’t been the killer video calling app that got a huge sizable member base that will allow most people to have most of their friends on it. However, it won’t be too long till these catch up on mobile carriers.

Why you shouldn’t give up on random chatting yet !

Well when omegle and chatroulette came out it created a new field of social networking which was random chatting. With their video capabilities, users were able to log on and just by the click of next, they would meet a swell of strangers from all over the world. In theory, it was awesome. On a stale day you could sit down at home and by random chat meet so many new strangers in the world and connect with a handful of them to actual new friendships.

However in practice, even though it started out awesome, a website like chatroulette soon had fame problems. Since it had no registration process, anyone could log on without having to give up their identity. Most of them would pull up and show off their genitals on webcam making sure their face is not shown. The phenomenon then grew to a point that by the peak of chatroulette you couldn’t click on next 3 times without seeing a man showing off his genitals.

That was a huge problem, people obviously didn’t want to see this and slowly but surely they started dropping off turning random chat into a fade. Another problem random chat had at the beginning was its lack of girls and the fact that most males came on just to chat with girls. It’s quite normal if they are straight however to sustain the phenomenon websites need to change that aspect.

However now past its peak, is random chatting worth the antagonism?

Random chat is pretty cool, it’s not about the voyeurisque aspect of human beings or the fact that websites like omegle were publicized a lot. The fact is that random chat websites tells us the most core thing about human beings, they like to interact. Humans like interaction, they like to meet people, they like to talk and connect, so when you build a website that allows them to do that easily it was all but normal it would pick up stream. That is the reason why social networking websites always get so many members.

Im messengers released before allowed users you to chat and stay connected with their friends and family. Chatrooms allowed people to meet new people but since it was all by text it felt like online dating. With random video chatting, you break those barriers earlier on and get to connect with people you meet like you were on the street actually talking to them. Also the way the first random chat websites where made you clicked next to meet a new person. However with progress, you would be able to use aspects of random chat and video chat in every aspect of online networking to help you meet and interact with people, say in an online group you are part of.

It allows people to meet new people that could eventually become their friends. Many websites did that before but without the video chat part integrated it doesn’t feel the same way. With video chatting websites you can meet, talk and connect with them much more. Isn’t that everyone wants? The good thing is that with random chat 2.0 websites coming out, it will make it easier to meet people that are relevant to you and with whom you are mostly likely to connect with. There will be more filters to meet people say in your school, region or any country of your choice or age of your choice. There won’t be pervs showing off anymore and it would keep you engaged so it is something you shouldn’t give up on yet.

Why you should join the video chat bandwagon now

Video chatting and calling have always been a fascination of us. Back when Star trek started using video calling in their series, people have always waited for the day that video communication will be part of our daily lives. Well ladies and gentlemen, that day is here and no one seems to care. Apps like skype that have brought us video calling in recent times but video chatting is still failing to take off with everyone.

 

Here is an interesting fact. Video chatting didn’t begin in the 21^st century as we may think, it actually started off in 1964 with AT&T. In 64’, AT&T develops what they called the picturefone which was some sort of huge phone that offered “video calls”. Basically you sat in front of your picturefone and on the other side there was a screen to see the user you are talking to. The picturefone took pictures of you every 2 second and processed it on the receivers screen to create an awkward simulation of a video call. In those days when it was announced, it led to great fanfare. However in application, it was clumsy and people didn’t like it because it was too big, expensive and they didn’t want to have to freshen up for the call every time. The project was shelved in 1970.

 

This is a great analogy in what had been going today till recent time. Well I may be exaggerating but when skype came out in the early 2000’s, 2003 to be precise, it took some time before it reached a huge following. We are talking about an application that allows its users to video call any of their contacts for free as well as make very cheap calls to phones.

 

People complain that video chatting involves too much work, you need to get ready, look good and control your environment. Also others don’t like the fact that it doesn’t really feel like a real conversation because you keep looking at the person in the face. Others say that in general people are lazy and don’t want the work involved in video communication as you have to pay attention to the person you are talking to especially when they are talking.

 

I have one thing to say to these people, Get over it. Video chatting has so much more pros to counter its few cons. The few things we are scratching right now with video chatting today, is just so limited to what video chatting will do to define our lives in the future.

 

Take video calling your friends and family for free. It seems like the description of skype but if you think about it for a bit, you will notice that it won’t be long before you will be video calling or calling all your friends and contacts for free and never pay mobile carriers again because some app allowed you to do so easily. I mean who in the right mind will still pay for a $60 mobile carrier plan when they can call and text all their friends for free.

 

Attend meetings physically will be similar to taking a run for the fun of it. You will do it if you really feel like breaking a sweat because all you really needed to do is to hop on your computer or tv and connect with the meeting or event you had to and get involved. Parent teachers meetings will be easier and cost effective. Same goes with board meetings or AA meetings.

 

Social networking will be in real time. To share a new video you found online you will share it live on video with your friends watching the video you shared at the same time as you and commenting on it with you on video. You will then be watching sport games and movies online with your friends connected with you as if you both were in a bar watching it together or at the movies.

 

After all people always thought in the past that the things we use today would have never happened. Bill Gates famously said that we would never need a computer with more than 256 KB in memory. Radio pioneer Gugliemo Marconi said that we would never use the tv because people didn’t want to watch live pictures in boxes, it was too much work.

 

I mean video chatting is soon exploding and with new websites like tinychat, google+, ustream, youtube it won’t be too long before video chatting will be an integral piece of your life. It’s time you hop on the wagon before you become a dinosaur. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.