The creator of ChatRoulette applies for US visa
spiegel.de
spiegel.de
Getting the "freaks and the fuckers" off the site doesn't prevent the service from doing something new.
I think the idea of being connected to people one-on-one is appealing and don't think the appeal will fade.
If only if there could be more serendipity with who you are connected with... I think that is an interesting opportunity right now.
Does the kid have what it takes to replicate virality and social/gaming mechanisms across other platforms? Or will anything he creates hereafter simply be a cut-rate knockoff of Chatroulette?
Is he a good hacker/developer and a great social theorist? Or did he just get lucky with this one idea?
If the latter, would a stint in America - in the Valley specifically - hone his instincts and skills and lead to even greater success later? Or will he be a has-been by 2011?
So many questions, and I wish I could get the answers.
Once you're lucky, it is much easier to be "lucky" again. Certainly, it will require skill on his part; but he'll have a brand and a name, two things that are much more invaluable than any sum of money he may get (although money of course won't hurt either).
The brand and the name alone will earn him followers -- lovers, and haters -- who will promote (in their own ways), whatever it is that he's making.
It is of course possible that he'll squander it all with some foolish mistakes and show that he was "just lucky", but I'd rather speculate about his success rather than his failure :D
Besides, he hasn't even finished this product yet, and you already want him to start working on something new? ;)
Ultimately, I think being in the valley will be beneficial for him. Kid should finish high school first though.
Young, fresh talent - geniuses, really - drive so much innovation in the Valley. They constitute a new form of capital.
If you think it's not a draft, then what do you make of "talent acquisitions" of otherwise worthless startups?
Why does it matter if he was lucky, if he has hacker skills, can be a "social theorist"? You write as if you believe he's this millenia's greatest young thinker.
Or will he be a has-been by 2011? What does that even mean? Are you buying into media hype that badly?
What do you want him to do, drop everything he's developed and go study for pulse checks on whether or not he did the reading?
Don't get me wrong, I'm an academic and have great respect for the value of education, but the traditional system doesn't seem to have been much use for this guy and at this point the training wheels fell off a long time ago. You can't just expect him to go put them back on.