Chat Roulette and it's 23 Clones

Chatroulette concept came to the Internet World with website Chatroulette.com.It is quite simple, you enter and allow to connect you web cam. That is all, no registration is necessary. Website pairs random strangers from around the world together for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website randomly begin an online chat (video, audio and text) with another visitor. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection.

The Chatroulette web site was created by Andrey Ternovskiy, a 17-year-old high school student in Moscow, Russia. Ternovskiy says the concept arose from video chats he used to have with friends on Skype, and that he wrote the first version of Chatroulette in "two days and two nights". Ternovskiy chose the name "Chatroulette" after watching The Deer Hunter, a 1978 film set in the Vietnam War in which prisoners of war are forced to play Russian roulette.

According to a survey carried out by RJMetrics, approximately 1 in 8 of feeds from Chatroulette involved 'R-rated' content. While it is definitely not recommended for kids, in spite or because the controversial content, the site gained a lot of exposure and popularity. More than that, the concept itself gained popularity, so there are multiple websites, offering similar services to its visitors.

In this Rating List, we are going to present original Chatroulett site and its latest clones.

Please access the list through the following link, and leave your opinion if you familiar with one of the presented sites: http://www.rateitall.com/t-8928459-chatroulette-sites-review.aspx

Are Social Networking Sites Safe for Kids?

By Steven Reinberg (HealthDay Reporter)
Friday, February 1, 2008; 12:00 AM

Reposted from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020101853.html

FRIDAY, Feb. 1 (HealthDay News) - While social networking Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook have been singled out as places where teens could face sexual harassment, most of the unwanted solicitation actually happens in chat rooms and via instant messaging, a new study finds.

Even there, only 15 percent of children experience unwanted sexual solicitation and only a third report being harassed online, according to a new study in the February issue of Pediatrics.

"There has been a recent concern about the risks posed by social networking to young people," said lead researcher Michele Ybarra, founder of Internet Solutions for Kids, a company that helps design safe Web sites for children. "But we found that instant messaging was more frequently cited than social networking sites as places for unwanted sexual solicitation and harassment," she said. "And chat rooms were more frequently cited than social networking sites."

In the study, Ybarra’s team collected data on 1,588 children aged 10 to 15 years old. In a survey, the children were asked about their online experiences over the past year. Among these children, 15 percent said they had an unwanted sexual solicitation. Only one-fourth of these occurred on a social networking site, Ybarra noted.

In addition, 33 percent said they were harassed online. About one-fourth of the incidents occurred on a social networking site.

However, 43 percent of unwanted sexual solicitations occurred via instant messaging, and 32 percent occurred in chat rooms. Harassment was most common with instant messaging, which accounted for 55 percent, the researchers found.

Ybarra thinks that rather than focusing on the technology, the focus should be placed on the children themselves. "We need to stop worrying about social networking sites and pay more attention to what young people are doing online generally," she said.

Parents have mistakenly thought that if their children aren’t on a social networking site they are safe, and if they are on one, they are at risk, Ybarra said. "We need to stop trying to scare our kids. We need to start having real conversations," she said.

"We need to help parents understand it’s not about social networking sites, it’s about monitoring what’s going on," Ybarra said. "Just as you should know where your child is after school, you should know where they go online."

One expert isn’t sure that social networking sites are as safe as Ybarra’s team found.

"I am most concerned that they have surveyed kids who are younger than I would have expected, with only half of the survey population in the 13 to 15 age range," said Kimberly M. Thompson, director of the Kids Risk Project at the Harvard School of Public Health.

MySpace and Facebook have age restrictions to prevent youths under ages 14 and 13 from using the sites, Thompson said. "This means that many of the kids in the survey are theoretically prevented from exposure, and one interpretation of the author’s findings is that setting an entry age is keeping many kids out of these sites," she said.

"The authors downplay the role of social networking sites instead of recognizing that these are the newest form of online media opportunities, and hence, their use and uses are still growing as people adopt the technology," Thompson added. "I wonder what they would have found if they surveyed a slightly older population."

The fear of social networking sites has lead one state to propose a law that would attempt to bar sex offenders from these sites.

Recently, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo drafted a bill mandating that e-mail addresses and screen names of registered sex offenders be reported to social networking sites.

The bill would make it easier to stop sex offenders from using popular teen-oriented sites. It would also bar paroled sex offenders from social networking sites and ban online communication with minors.

Take Part in Blog Carnivals

How to increase blog traffic without financial investments (part 10)

The set of the articles on the blog traffic increase started from my personal interest to the topic. I intended to cover briefly in one article all the main approaches for the newbie-blogger, as myself. Did not work this way! The topic appeared to be endless, and this article represents already part number 10. At the beginning, I decided to post only information on the promotion techniques that I have personally tried. I had to bend this rule as well, since this topic already drives me through without giving opportunity to stop and relax. When, I will finish the set, I will come back and pick up the promotion ways that seem easy to implement, and promise the best return on investments. I am sure, that Blog Carnivals participation will be than one of my favorites. I love carnivals! Just the name itself gives a taste of festivity and celebration.

What is a meaning of Blog Carnivals?

Blog Carnivals are collections of individual posts and articles, fitting provided topics of discussion, which are received from different blogs, with each author expressing his personal viewpoint and remarks on a subject. Usually, Blog Carnival is started by one hosting blog, which acts as a form of table of contents, posting the submitted articles or post to the topic of discussion. Such carnivals can be originated by popular and well-established blogs or bloggers’ groups, aligning the carnival topic with the blog usual content.

The central Web Site for this marketing niche is BlogCarnival.com. This site’s definition for Blog Carnivals is provided below:

“A Blog Carnival is a particular kind of blog community. There are many kinds of blogs, and they contain articles on many kinds of topics. Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. A Blog Carnival is like a magazine. It has a title, a topic, editors, contributors, and an audience. Editions of the carnival typically come out on a regular basis (e.g. every monday, or on the first of the month). Each edition is a special blog article that consists of links to all the contributions that have been submitted, often with the editors opinions or remarks.”

Why participate in Blog Carnivals?

Planning your blog promotion campaign, consider the following benefits of participation in Blog Carnivals:
Your posts submission at the Carnival gives external links to your blog from the sites within the area of your interests. These links will assist to establish blog reputation and improve its credibility in the bloggers’ community, and add to the blog ranking in the Search Engines.

You can be linked not just by the carnival hosting site through your posting, but also from other blogs as well. Another carnival participant, or just visitor, might find your story through the carnival post, and might choose linking to it.

You get additional instant high-quality traffic. Getting tons of visitors from carnivals is, probably, one more online myth, but if you take part in a popular carnival on a well-known Blog, and your post is interesting enough to attract visitors’ attention, you will see a definite boost of traffic count to your blog. And this is not a random traffic of the bystanders, but the visitation from the most active and interested members of the bloggers community.

You have a great opportunity to meet other people working in the same direction as you are. Participants for the blog carnival are easy to establish long-term relationship between them due to the common interests. Also, you have a good chance to read valuable posts and suggestions from other people, that you would not be able to find in any other way.

You have a chance to win valuable prices for your publication.

The participation in the Blog Carnivals does not require significant time investment, unless you are specifically preparing the post for the particular celebration from scratch. As you can choose the topic of discussion, in most cases, you can use the material for the submission, which is already available on your blog. To test the efficiency of the submission process, I was able to perform the procedure of finding the appropriate blog and submitting my own entry in no more than 10 minutes.

Where to Submit for Blog Carnivals

I did not find a big variety of the sites that centralize the Blog Carnivals search and establishment. In fact, there is just a single site that is dedicated to this mission:
Blog Carnival: http://blogcarnival.com/

In a way, it makes all the operations related to the blog carnivals much easier for the hosts and submitters. Hosting Blog Carnival is another great way to promote your site, but that requires from the host site to be already solid and established, the goal we are all working for.

How to increase blog traffic without financial investments (part 2)

You can access the first post, related to the Blog Content highlights and recommendations (part 1), through the following link:

http://webfreebies4u.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-to-increase-blog-traffic-without.html

In the second part we will discuss the posting techniques and approaches to improve overall blog visibility and get the genuine traffic of your visitors – people, who are interesting in the same topic as you are, and who eventually might become your virtual friends, fans, and supporters.

Part 2: Blog Posting

1. Content Posting.
* Post your content during weekdays, since you can get a wider audience.
* Post your content on weekends, as there are fewer posts, and your post can get more attention from the readers.
* Post at different hours of a day. The post is the most active as it is brand new. At the time it is fresh, it has the biggest exposure opportunities in your community. Later, the newer posts will push your publication lower and lower, until it disappears completely from the recent posts listing. Posting at the different schedules will help you reaching the customers from different time zones and with various computer-using routines.
2. Tagging your posts. Tag your content accurately and smartly, so your visitors can find you post by focusing on their particular area of interest. Do not try using the tags or keywords, just because they are popular and will attract the most expensive AdSense advertising. If the tags do not match your content, your visitors will never come back.
3. Linking to other Blogs. There are several valid reasons to make a link in your post to other blogs or publications. Giving legitimate references to the articles and posts, which you used for your blog entry, or providing more information on the other sources related to the topic of discussion, will not divert your visitors away out of your page. Instead, it will reach the following potentially positive outcomes:
* You help your visitors to get the full picture on the topic of interests, and they will appreciate your openness and extra-efforts to assist them.
* You build the audience that will trust your judgment, as you are not just a source of the posted information, but also an expert in the deeper informational research on the topic.
* You save yourselves from the legal consequences, if you are accused in plagiarism. As far, as you point out on the text author, you are free from the possible accusations and banning from your host for unethical behavior. Just, be sure to check your hosting site, if the non-original content is allowed, when you intend to copy the borrowed article, or any part of it, “as is”.
* The authors of the posts, you give references to, might notice your links, and take a look on your posts. It is especially useful, when you refer to the blog, which is much more established, than yours.
* And finally, when you notify the author on linking to his posts, it can be considered as a polite way of hinting on the possible link exchange. Just remember, that it is not your main target at the moment. Do not be aggressive on the link exchange requirements, otherwise instead of getting the good reputation, you are striving for, you will end up with a bad one.
4. Leaving Comments and Participating in Discussions. Improve your rating by giving quality comments on other people’s blogs. Your point of view and your thoughtful remarks might also drive visitors to your personal blog. There is nothing wrong to post link to your blog in the comment, if it is relevant to the comment topic. Posting irrelevant link or non-informative comment will bring you more harm than good, as readers will consider your comment as spam. Anyway, if you have a good post, the link in your signature can help; even in the case it does not match the topic of discussion. Readers, attracted by your nice comment, might want to explore your other posts as well. Give them the opportunity.
5. Replying to the Comments on your Posts. Always make sure to reply to the comments and questions, your readers are leaving on your posts. If they spent their valuable time to write the note, you should respect that and show your gratitude by replying, or giving them the advice they are asking for. It also makes the post more interactive and drives more visitors.
6. Inspect the reading statistics from your current posts, and learn which posts were the most successful. Investigate in depth your own content and try to understand, what exactly in these particular posts could contribute to the booming exposure. It might not be just content, but also formatting, timing, hosting community influence, else. As you figured out what all your popular posts have in common, try reproducing the success in the future publications.

To be continued.