Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster and the first president of Facebook, spoke on stage at the Techonomy conference today and disclosed that he is now working with the live video service Chatroulette. He shared a vision of the company evolving into a metric-driven live performance publishing tool.
“Nobody’s nailed live video yet,” he said. Skeptics might wonder whether Chatroulette, revolutionary in its user experience but infamous for explicit sexual acts, has come any closer to nailing live video than others have – but Parker sees room for more sophisticated analysis of user behavior to change the way the service works.
“Chatroulette is eliminating all approach anxiety, there’s no adverse signaling. You’re just thrust into a conversation with people. Right now it’s one to one, but you can imagine a one-to-many approach there, too. People who don’t get nexted [skipped over to a next conversation] could be helped to draw a bigger audience. If you don’t get nexted, you’re more likely to be a cute girl, less likely to be a penis. You’re more likely to be interesting. It could evolve toward live performance.”
Do you buy that? I think I might. Knowing now that Parker is involved with Chatroulette is a big new reason to keep an eye on the little company in the future. Parker’s co-founder at Napster, Shawn Fanning, was reported earlier this summer to be advising Chatroulette as well.
