It’s fair to say Bebo hasn’t really lived up to its potential, mainly because Facebook has become the only social network most people use. But the new owners have a plan to fightback, and live video chat between strangers is a big part of that plan.
Video Chatting… With Strangers
Video conferencing has been a mainstay on the Web for a long time now, but the technology and broadband speeds have helped make it a joyful rather than a frustrating experience. If you have a decent Webcam and Internet connection then you’re halfway there.
The only thing you may need are friends and family to talk to, but even they aren’t a necessity any longer, thanks to the new trend for chatting with strangers.
Chatroulette arguably started this trend, or at least brought it into the mainstream. But now there are a multitude of ways you can have random chats with random people online. Who said the Web was an unsociable tool?
Bebo bChat
is the once-popular British social network which suffered a similar fate to MySpace when Facebook basically became ubiquitous. After being bought and then sold by AOL for a huge loss, the new London-based owners are determined to rebuild the site to its former levels of interest.
Its first rollout is a new video chat effort called bChat. Based on social video chat platform vChatter, bChat will allow Bebo users to conference with each other, regardless of whether they’re friends or not.
Unlike Chatroulette, which suffered due to its entirely random nature, bChat connects people based on the information they’ve provided to the site. So I guess you know you’ll at least have something in common with your new buddy.
Bebo has 117 million registered users, but only 12 million of those are active. It’s clearly hoping, with aid of new features like this one, to persuade those who have lapsed to come back into the fold.
Conclusions
I guess this shows how huge video chat is at this point; that Bebo would see it as a feature capable of tempting people back to the site. And thanks to moderation, the scenes of a sexual nature that blighted Chatroulette shouldn’t be a problem.
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