User-Generated Content (UGC) has allowed the human race to come together and advance our knowledge as a whole on pretty much any topic you can think of, from inventing new ways to browse the internet to answering any question an encyclopedia can’t.
While everyone is told as a child that they’re special and entitled to their own opinions, there are still scores of people that shouldn’t have the ability to speak or be seen in public. However, it appears that those people tend to make up the majority of UGC contributors. It only takes one pube to ruin the whole pizza, as is the case with many platforms designed for UGC. There are many examples of such failed platforms, but I’m going to focus on the newest contender entering the ring: Chat Roulette.
Chat Roulette is a website that connects random users together via webcam…and that’s it. There is no censorship, no sign up, no roadblocks. The website has limitless possibilities. In one minute you could be discussing politics with another college student across the country, to igniting a romantic relationship with a woman who happens to live near you, to getting a free concert from a musician looking for any audience who will listen. However, this is not a perfect world. In reality, Chat Roulette offers you only three things: bros with their shirts off, 14 year old girls, and naked old dudes playing with their pants hammers.
A typical Chat Roulette experience
The third typical user mentioned easily makes up about 80% of Chat Roulette. It’s become such a problem that it has its very own website dedicated to tracking the amount of chubs caught on camera, and has even spun off into its own drinking game. The website tries to give users the ability to report other users for behavior that violates the terms of service, but unfortunately Chat Roulette has placed the button right next to the offender’s video feed, forcing you stare at his hairy marbles if you want to serve justice. However, it’s just easier to hit F9 and move on to the next video, allowing these sad old men to continue ruining others’ evenings just like they ruined yours.
The good news is, not all is lost; UGC has helped many people and businesses using platforms like Facebook and Twitter to deliver greater customer service and brand experience. It’s tough to find examples of great pages, since many awesome ones were covered in class, but one Twitter page that does it right is Tampa Rap.com. Tampa Rap is a website owned by a high school friend of mine, Joey. It’s essentially a user-generated community designed to allow Tampa rappers and rap fans the ability to promote and collaborate with each other. He constantly updates the twitter feed with links to local Hip Hop events, mixtapes to download, and opportunities to participate with the website in filming music videos and the like. He also constantly engages with fans, and retweets other local rappers’ tweets to help promote local artists and build up the Tampa Rap community. While he may not have an incredible amount of followers as of the writing of this post, he has only just recently started utilizing his twitter correctly, and it’s only a matter of time before he gains the followers he deserves.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Killer title! I think these examples of failed UGC platforms may tempt us to come to one conclusion: not all user- generated content is created equal. However, one of the wonders of these platforms is that there is a level playing field: everyone has an opinion, and everyone’s opinion is equally powerful (in that they can sway the opinion of others). Nonetheless, a check and balance system, like on Wikipedia where citations are needed to establish credibility, is sometimes necessary.
In the case of chatroulette, I think the quality of the platform is as poor as the design of the site itself. It may have been a good idea initially, but nobody on chatroulette visits the site for anything more than a few laughs and shock value. If you’re looking for love or friendship, try eHarmony. Otherwise, you are barking up the wrong tree.
“Pants Hammers”.
Shaan Wins Again guys.
[...] people are learning things from…each other (gasp). And now, there’s this thing called Chat Roulette where you can either chat with a student halfway across the world or make fun of old, morbidly [...]