Chatroulette for text messages | Hacker News Reader

Chatroulette for text messages

randtxt.com

73 pointsmayop10026 comments

Yup, just like chatroulette

    Message received from 858-XXX-XXXX at Sun Apr 10 2011 21:59:46 GMT+0000 (UTC) 
    What nonsense do you speak of? The humanity!
    Reply received from 724-XXX-XXXX at Sun Apr 10 2011 22:28:29 GMT+0000 (UTC) 
    8========================D

Am I the only one that would be a little worried about posting anything on here knowing that the X's could be removed at any point and thus the next (person|boss|gf|friend) to search my cell number would get to see my 'witty' response?

Lissn.com reminds me of a far more polished "chatroulette for text" except I was able to talk to a lady in Japan for half an hour about the recent tragedy on Lissn, and I didn't have to disclose my cellphone number to anybody or get billed for using the service.

Lissn is blowing up with HN users right now. Its quite nice. Sort of like 2-3 person IRC chat rooms.

Not sure what the real value is, but its fun for the moment.

I'm really enjoying this, it's an excellent idea. I think with tweaks and expansions it could be great.

There's also Omegle.

Thanks for the post! Our goal is to create the best conversation platform for having good conversations, so if you had (or lissned to) a good conversation, we have done our job. :)

I've talked with people from Egypt during their protests, Libya during their conflicts and Japan after their quake. It's been a sporadic, fun initial community (currently the site is taken over by people from Taiwan).

We're releasing a new feature each week based off user feedback. It's been interesting, as our plan has changed by the week. Started with an MVP, listened to the customer & building out. Hope to see you guys around lissn :)

I built this a few months ago on twilio as well, and spent a massive amount of time trying to dispel the "chatroulette for ____" angle :)

my initial testers all got nailed with $30+ cell phone bill increases because Twilio only has american numbers. and canadians can't text american numbers for free anymore.

if anybody wants the code, it's built in django and I own www.texted.in with it (currently down since djangy is going away)

cellphone providers all over the world are now scrambling to make absolutely, unequivocally sure that this goes viral.

And as a result, it's virtually guaranteed to die out within about three hours of this happening.

(Has any big company ever succeeded in making something "go viral"? All I can think of is that "I'm on a horse" series of ads on YouTube. Ironically, I can't remember what they were selling. Old Spice?)

pretty sure the one I saw had Grover on a horse

[Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkd5dJIVjgM ]

Oh hooray, now I can pay ten cents a pop for what I used to hate getting for free!

Wait, who do you have that it's only ten cents?

Get a Google Voice number and it's free ;)

I pay about $40/month for my phone plan, and get about 1300+ texts included, of which I use about a dozen

  Message received from 479-XXX-XXXX at Sun Apr 10 2011 22:26:23 GMT+0000 (UTC)
    I'm from England!
  Reply received from 626-XXX-XXXX at Sun Apr 10 2011 22:29:32 GMT+0000 (UTC)
    I am fasting, but it's not going very well.

If only Twilio would support international messaging by default so I could have got that reply, and had a message to reply to.

It seems to me like the responses are not in order - you probably got a response to someone asking about an Orthodox Christian fast that is going on now.

I never, ever participated in Chartoulette, but for some odd reason I immediately tested this out.

And, I have to admit - it's a winner.

It's like the Cracker Jacks of text messaging. Every text is a winner...

I think many people are confused and don't quite understand which message they should be replying to.. perhaps it'd be better to have 2 numbers? One for starting an exchange and one for completing them..

i believe there was textslide that did something similar. Will try it out!

you would be correct. textslide is still alive and well: http://textslide.com

http://mashable.com/2010/10/26/textslide/

Very cool application of Twilio!

I'd feel more comfortable trying it if my SMSs weren't publicly displayed.

Although I did just upgrade my SMS plan to 1,000... Hmm.

would be cool if it supported mms.

This road can lead only to an increase in the presence of penises in MMS messages.

Maybe if enough 8-year-old kids get these messages, the carriers will finally do something about TXT spam.

True, but Twilio doesn't support MMS yet.

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