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Chatroulette’s got some issues!

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Recently, Chatroulette, the world’s biggest random video chatting social network, has been having some issues — nudity issues.

The website which was founded by 17-year-old Andrey Ternovskiy, has been flooded with users going naked on webcams, most of whom are men. Chatroulette enables quick switches between random chats coupled with seamless streaming webcam video to give users the full effect of the random chat experience which has boosted the site’s traffic to staggering numbers. Nonetheless, the increase in the amount of random nude men has decreased Chatroulette’s popularity and has Chatroulette’s chances of becoming a profitable, brand-advertising supported site.

A competition has been held to engage users in creating a solution for the problem. Some ideas like: auto-pixelating the image if no facial features are recognized and creating a sister website – Rawchatroulette.com are pretty brilliant; however, it would be intersting to see how the young Russian founder handles this issue.

Click here for more info on Andrey Ternovskiy’s future plans for chat roulette.

Blogging vs Status-updating

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Businesses, content publishers media channels have been pushing for blog creation as a way of engaging existing and reaching new readers. With 133 million blog posts submitted on Technorati since 2002, blogging is deep-rooted in all mainstream online media.

So why do I believe that blogs are losing popularity to Status-updating?

With the popularity and inescapabilty of microblogging and activity streams and time lines, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and the like are competing to build a community around the status-updating system – the state of publishing, reading, responding to, and sharing micro-sized updates.

This new trend of pacey interaction is further scattering the conversation and is growing online interaction beyond the host site through syndication to other relevant networks and communities. Those who might typically respond with a formal blog post (on the host site) may now choose to respond with a tweet or a status update.

Blog posts are increasingly being shared in micro communities and social networks which is detouring attention and time away from posts on the host website or blog. Social network users comment back on shared blog post, creating conversations away from the original blog post. We are learning to publish and react to content in “Twitter time” while spending less time blogging, commenting directly on blogs, or writing blogs in response to blog sources because of our active participation in micro communities.

Likes and RTs (retweets) on Facebook and Twitter and posting shortened links that connect friends and followers back to the source post, have changed our behavior regarding blogs and made us major players in defining the evolution of the connectivity and dissemination of online content.

Technorati might not have foreseen it, but Twitter and Facebook might as well be its next biggest competitors.

The Social Media Syndrome

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You konw you’re a Social Media Addict when you:

1) Overshare

Your friends let you know that they pressed “HIDE” next to your recent status update or shared post because you’re updating too frequently.

2) Are always online

You get a message from your friend saying “HELP! My car broke down!” instead of receiving a phonecall from him/her because he/she knows that the fastest way to reach you is
through Facebook.

3) Twist the ratios

If you’ve met five of your six really good friends online – that’s 5 to 1.

4) Take few too many pictures

If you have 3 Facebook albums titled:

My New Car PART 1

My New Car PART 2

My New Car PART 3

…that’s a few hundred pics for your new ride!

5) Adopt things a bit too early

If your Twitter account shows the following consecutive tweets:
– May 15: I can’t wait for the release of the #iPad tomorrow!!
– May 16: I just got my Apple #iPad – I can barely wait for the #Android-Tablet!!

How addicted are you?