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Omegle: Hey There, Stranger!
March 30, 2009
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I must send out a thank you to two tech divas: Veronica Belmont and Sarah Lane. These two ladies have introduced me to the weird, anonymous world of Omegle through their Twitter posts.
What is Omegle? It’s a chat room that pairs you randomly with someone else. Both chatters are anonymous, identified only by the handle “Stranger.” You can chat about anything you like. You can share data or talk about the weather. You can make a new friend or frustrate a stranger until he or she chooses to disconnect from the conversation. It’s pretty much a free-for-all.
Either party can disconnect from the conversation at any point. If the conversation isn’t going anywhere or the other chatter goes idle, you can skip out and try again. You may end up chatting with a curious Web celebrity. It might even be yours truly, so be nice.
Upon logging in for the first time, I braced myself for trolling. Anonymity on the Web often leads to abusive language and sophomoric behavior. My first conversation wasn’t terribly successful. I typed “Hello strange person.” My conversation partner promptly disconnected the conversation. Clearly I need to work on my online social skills.
My second and third conversations were a little more successful. I even got far enough to find out the third conversational partner was from Guadalajara. That’s as much personal information as we shared.
Civility went out the window with conversation number four, but a 75-percent success rate is nothing to sneeze at. It’s an interesting social experiment. I don’t see it having any real lasting effect, but it was fun to make contact with random people.
Learn more about how to use the Internet to make connections with people at HowStuffWorks.com:
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Comments
32 Responses to “Omegle: Hey There, Stranger!”
Rhett says: Hey Jon, I love your podcast with Chris, but I haven’t heard you guys talk about the Palm Pre at all, it has an amazing OS called the WebOS. I think you guys should check it out 
showell says: Great podcast, addicted.
Not a techfreak, but more than a casual user.
I think on the tech projections for 2009 podcast, you mentioned a Google OS. You should play around some on eyeos.org – that what I’d foresee in their future, something that could be launched within Chrome.
[...] Omegle: Hey There, Stranger! [...]
jenny says: Personally I love that listener mail noise and the part where Johnathan yells: “IT’S LISTENER MAIL!!!!!! -O-” lol it wouldn’t be techstuff without it.
stranger says: Isn’t this just a copy of http://www.anicechat.net which pioneered the concept over a year ago? I mean, there are numerous of proofs for this, for instance, A Nice Chat was discovered on StumbleUpon on 8th September, 2008: http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.anicechat.net/
…and Omegle was launched 25th March, 2009.
I mentioned this on the discussion page for Omegle on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Omegle
Feel free to contribute with your thoughts and opinions on this! It seems like the site which actually pioneered the concept deserves the credibility, and not some ripoff, right?
heartudatingdotcom says: Either way its like saying wasnt there a free movie site started 9 years ago and the new one that started yesterday ripped it off..whatever!! well done to that 18 year old kid and may he have lots of luck with his site as its gaining popularity every day..
There is a quotes database (QDB) for the best Omegle.com chats at zomegle.com
It’s like bash.org, but exclusively for omegle.com.
Deejayundoo says: Hey guys! What`s up ? I found another site like omegle. http://www.iddin.com . What do you think about it ?
[...] also ran into some people abusing the service. As Jon Strickland rights on his blog, “Anonymity on the Web often leads to abusive language and sophomoric behavior.” I have [...]
Suzan says: If you think omegle can be bad, try http://tjetter.com – it’s similar, but allows third-party visitors to eavesdrop on conversations. Quoting their site:
“Tjettering is anonymous and absurd. It allows you to meet the strangest of people and to get insulted in ways you could never have imagined. Furthermore, all your conversations can be (and will be) eavesdropped, may appear on Google, in the newspaper, or just about anywhere else. In other words, when looking for some distraction: TJETTER!”
You guys can just post the chats to http://www.mobozo.com – It’s a lot easier and definitely more enjoyable.
the last stranger i chatted with showed me a quite funny site of the best omegle convos that people send in Http//metastranger.com
alex says: the last stranger i chatted with showed me a quite funny site of the best omegle convos that people send in Http://metastranger.com
jeff [...] howstuffworks’de dolaşırken burada tesadüfen denk geldiğim ve bana ilginç gelen bir siteden bahsetmek istiyorum. Basit bir chat [...]
hey i wanna thanx this website coz i got a chance to me the member.. ok bye
hesaidandshesaid says: I find Omegle to be mostly people trolling for cyber sex, but the occasional person you come across who actually wants to talk to a stranger about something other than a/s/l is a really cool social experiment. http://hesaidandshesaid.wordpress.com/
WallpaperDude says: Omegle has turned into a complete garbage dump between normal waking US hours. It’s nothing but spam, macros and bots now. And most of them are people advertising their rip-off sites that are blatant copycats of Omegle (probably source code and all).
rawr
another fact-bending conservative, Wildman, calls another poster a hypocrite–not for something they actually did or said, but for what he THINKS they MIGHT do in a given situation.
What an asshat
am interested in meeting and chating to people all over the world
fakesmilesandpurplekisses says: http://fakesmilesandbeetlejuice.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/so-i-found-this-site/
check out the link, (it’s about omegle), and I think, a little, funny.
Omegle, can be greattttt and not so great, potluck really
Reconnect with that stranger!
Aaron says: There’s a new better version of Omegle out that lets you send pictures, use smilies, etc. It’s called iMeetzu, at http://imeetzu.com – there also isn’t any spam, so that’s kinda nice. Looks like they’re planning on adding some sort of user registration system as well that still allows you to maintain anonymity if you want – not sure how it will work.
Have used Omegle for months. It is a great site. Still use it, but it has become overrun by spam bots which is getting annoying quick. There are a few other major anon chat sites that are good but might eventually get overrun by spam bots when they become popular. Those onces include Iddin.com and GettingRandom.com. The former lets you talk by country, the latter lets you talk by Gender.
Omegle user says: Omegler is so much better. A free Omegle client that runs over Omegle too, but with greater functionality and many more features.
Err... says: Um, GettingRandom doesn’t even work…and Iddin has no following.
Okay so for one… omegle is officially griefed up and their snoz berries taste like snoz berries…
It’s apparent Abra lives inside of Omegle and is constantly teleporting…
second your an idiot for thinking you could out troll a troller
DEATH TO ZEBRAS!!!!!!
=^_^=
chat conversation says: I think a key question is where does Omegle go from here. The initial idea was inspired but without making a change to the site since the beginning, various requested features like using images, and quality matters like restricting bots go unaddressed. When will Omegle get updated, if ever? An interesting article – http://ezinearticles.com/?Anonymity-Taken-to-the-Next-Level—Omegle&id=2846300 – discusses the effect of anonymity on people’s behavior.
mm bookmarked
Love the podcast, but I’m with Pollette. DEATH to the listener mail alarm noise!!! Nails on a chalkboard…