Webcam Chat Blog

Just a reminder of our webcam social media sites. This a great way to keep up with the latest webcam chat news and reviews. First of all be sure to “Like” camchat.org on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/freewebcamchat today. The chatters really enjoy posting what is new and sharing their ideas there. Also our MySpace page has been at http://www.myspace.com/webcam_chat for quite some time. MySpace was probably one of the first social media sites we were on and this is another great way to keep in touch with our friends from the chatroom. We started tweeting last year and you can find our tweets at https://twitter.com/camchat running most of the time. I try to put out a tweet daily. Be sure to sign up to receive our tweets. The latest addition is https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/112303888655946756296/ our Google+ site. Google circles and hangouts are a fun way to communicate and is the latest of our social efforts. Be sure to follow CamChat.org on our other sites to keep up with the latest webcam chat news.

As we move into 2012 CamChat.org continues to grow. The room moderators are doing a great job with the increased traffic, and we are listed better than ever on the searches. A big thanks goes to all the mods for doing a great job with the webcam chat.

There were some recent changes made to the chat code and the login process. We should be aware of the changes so we can best help the new chatroom user.

The login process has changed. In order to simplify the process to get into the webcam and chat room, there are new directions for the user, which include pictures of the things they should click. You can no longer use a nickname that is registered by another user. The chat system will prompt the user to change their chat name.As always any chatroom rule violations are dealt with quickly by our live staff. We might have the best live chatroom staff ever.

We have made it harder for the user to change names on the fly. This has always been a problem in the chat room because then we have a mismatch in the system. That makes things confusing for the new user. We have removed private messaging all together as there are too many problems with this chat feature being misused. This seems to be working much better for the regular webcam users.

We have added the feature for users to choose their chatroom text color and style. Having the different colors in the chatroom makes it easier for the user to keep up with the conversations. The eye can easily catch the colors and skip over what is not important at the moment

Again, thanks for visiting www.camchat.org and have a happy 2012 everyone.

We are often what webcam views are allowed and what can be banned. Here’s a quick outline. Webcams pointed at the floor, wall, a toy, or a black screen is ok as long as they are logged into the chatroom. We need to allow for users to point the cam away for short periods of time for their personal reasons. Of course if a user is not logged into the chatroom then we have to do something.

I wanted to take a moment to thank our webcam video provider over at www.camamba.com . They have always been there for us providing top shelf video for us. Like I said over at http://www.camchat.org/blogs/2011/08/06/whats-the-objective-anyway/ we can’t operate without our webcam and chat partners.

As far as chatroom users that get kicked or banned from the chat we’d like to be thought of as a group that gives a second chance. We find that some users need to know their limits before they can fit in. Let’s look at a webcam violator as salvageable and try a kick first, on re-entry to the chat room explain what was wrong. If it keeps up, then set the ban. We have been able to obtain new valuable chatters understanding that that some need to know their chat limits first.

Now with the acceptable chat room nicknames this is what I do. If the user has an unacceptable nickname we can warn to change it. I give them like 60 seconds and warn again. Give like 20 seconds and kick from the chatroom. If the nickname looks bad in the cam list we should stop the cam as well.

There will be cases when an immediate ban is needed, such as trouble webcam users. Other cases will be up to your best judgment. Remember, we do not allow harassing of any of our users. This is one of the principals that have kept the community growing over the years.

Of course there will be users that want to help with the chat room. The room staff is asked this a lot. The best thing they can tell the normal user is that we greet guests, help get cams going, and keep the chat moving. We can tell users if they do this, the room staff will notice. That would be a users best chance of becoming a Room Mod. It can be done.

Thanks everyone and enjoy the chat.
www.camchat.org

What can we do with flash going out?

Neither Apple nor Microsoft are going to support flash anymore. No, they are not hating on Adobe, it’s just that things are moving to HTML5. Our site does not work on the new tablets and the upcoming version of windows will not support flash. Our webcams are chat based. That means we’re not going to work well with emerging technologies.

As we look to the future we’ll likely have to find a solution for our webcams that does not involve flash. We’ll have to look at the possibilities of HTML5 and see what we can do. Any input is appreciated.

Hello everyone. I thought I would clear up some things about what kind of links are ok to paste in the chat room and what links are not. Remember we are a jealous website. We work hard to get our guests to the chatroom and we don’t want to lose any to another chat operation. This has always presented a problem for our style of webcam chat.

I think Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube links are ok. They don’t cause any harm. One thing’s for sure, camchat.org has always been and always will be a free webcam chat website. It’s not about the money.

What we want to look for is links to other chat networks and people spamming their business. This is because we are not a springboard for other businesses. It’s not right to advertise in our chat room when they could build their own community and advertise there.

The reason for “No Messengers” is simple. We’re trying to keep people chatting here, not on each others messengers. Some emails are actually the messenger address so we don’t allow emails in the chatroom and we don’t lose any users to other video chat sites like our own.

Email addresses open us up for a lot of trouble so we just try to keep them out of the room.

I hope this cleared some items up. I am often asked about this type of behavior so I wanted to post something on the subject while we were on webcams.

The mods enter a professional-sounding reason in their chatroom and webcam bans showing which CamChat.org rule was broken. This way we can better keep track of who is banning who and all the room moderators can stay informed.

Thanks guys and keep reading.

What’s the objective?

For the first 3 years I didn’t know either. I knew I liked chatrooms and when you added the webcams made it that much better. You could see who you were chatting with.

So what are we trying to do?

I think the driving force behind CamChat.org is being able to sit down at your computer and webcam chat with people from around the world for free. CamChat.org has always been free and that’s the way it will stay. I guess it has finally become a community and our objective would be to make it grow. This is why greeting the guest is so important.

Our goal would be to make the community grow with users like us.
: )

Webmaster
www.CamChat.org

Why greet the guests if they just leave anyway?

I’m often asked this so I thought I’d post something on it. First of all keep our objective in mind. To make the webcam community grow. Greeting the guest and getting them involved with the current conversation is the best way to make them feel welcome. In my first IRC Chatrooms I landed in, years ago, I was greeted. That made me want to stay. If I weren’t greeted and made to feel welcomed that day, I may not have stuck with it.

By greeting the guest we have the chance of making them stay just a moment longer. This can be a wonderful thing. If that guest stays just a moment longer, reading your text, we have a better chance of another person joining during that time. The first user sees people joining the room and a growing dynamic webcam community. The chat room will at that point start to grow. I’ve done it over and over.

Also remember we’re looking for that one-in-a-million chatter. You know the ones. The ones like every single one of you. Greeting is the best way to start that search.

At first there was Java to connect to the chat room. That was the method we used to connect the webpage user to the chat server. That’s because there was no other stable way. Java was very slow to load and was very heavy on the user’s computer. The chat room took a while to load. We tried other ways but Java was the only sure way to get them into the chatroom.

Then came ajax. This is much better. Though still not Flash it loads fast and is easier on the user’s machine.

All along I have looked for a Flash connection to the chat server so we can be loading as fast as possible with the latest technology and offering the best user experience. It seems that Chat and Flash development just never crossed paths in our favor.

The good news is that now there is a fine Flash applet available for the chat. Though not as fancy as our current ajax applet it does the job just fine.

As technology changes so should we. In order to stay up to date and use the latest technology I think it would be in our best interest to move to a Flash based chat. Having a Flash based chat will have us in a better position for future upgrades and updates.

The new Flash chat may not look as nice as our current ajax chat, and it may not have as many features but we needed to update the chat to stay current and so we’ll be ready for future upgrades. Flash is the quickest, slickest, up to date way to get the users connected from a webpage.

Thanks for reading and watch as CamChat.org grows and changes.

Introducing the CamChat.org VIP Pass

With CamChat growing so rapidly we’re going to have to make the changes. We’re losing regulars because it is no longer a relaxing place to hang out and webcam chat. The traffic is too heavy and full of problem users to enjoy a good chat. We have to find a way to keep the regular chatters happy because they make our community what it is.

My first idea was to give them their own room free of the problems. This brings up several things though. In their new room the webcam list would not refresh. There would still be people trying to chat with them in the main chatroom that they no longer watch. Additionally there would be people requesting their webcam from the main room. Also remember that people return to see these regulars that we would now be paying attention to a different room. This all seems like an awkward solution.

Another idea was to install a registration layer where the new user would have to register and wait for a password in order to access the room. This brings up a different issues.

Julie came up with an awesome idea that will solve most of our problems. A VIP Pass for the regulars. Here is how it can worked. We already have the new database structure sketched out on paper.

The chat room will be capped at 40 users. When the 41st user attempts to join they will be sent to a “Room is Full” page. This page would have a “Try again’ button that would become active after a 10 second countdown. After a 10 second wait the user can again attempt to join the room.

If that 41st user is a “Regular” they would be logging in with their VIP pass and would be let in. The room would then have 41 users. Room Moderators, of course login around this whole process and are not affected.

How do they get a VIP Pass?

I’d like to stay away from a voting process as used in nominating the chat room moderators. We’ll need something faster than that. We’re going to set up an additional database. A current mod will add a name for VIP consideration. A second moderator will agree. These will be this VIP holder’s two sponsors. It will then move to my desk where I’ll approve it.

VIP users would skip all the in between pages and be thrown right into the chat.

I think this is the right direction for us. The “regs” will always be able to get into the system while keeping the other users waiting if the room becomes too big. We should have a higher ratio of contributing users while keeping the number of problem users limited.

Thanks for doing this, guys. I have been very busy lately and I’ve been called back to work so I have a job again. (for now). YaY! $$

CamChat has grown. OMG! It has grown beyond my wildest dreams. I just enjoyed chatting with people from all over the world and wanted to share it and I always found a way to offer it for free. Well … I covered the costs.

It all started so small … I’m talking about me and -_Dark_- (Rob) looking at each other on cam and wondering how to make it successful. But I’ve already told that story. The truth is that it has finally succeeded. I never thought it could get this big.

I understand the mods are stressed. This is something new for us. We are not used to this level of traffic. An area where camchat has failed is scalability. The ability to grow. I wanted more traffic but failed to consider consequences of it actually catching on. I’ll need you guys help in dealing with this.

I feel like the community feel is becoming lost. We’re losing the ability to retain “regulars”. The mods are over-worked and the site has become a place to login and ban undesirables. This was not my intentions.

I have never opened a second room because I felt we do not have the moderator power to cover it. Additionally there is a technical issue where as the webcam list will not update while changing chatrooms. It’s two different systems.

The traffic to the room is out the roof. I can’t believe the numbers from the stats page. This is a result of 15 years of trying to get to the top of search engines for the right search term and it finally worked. We’re finally ranking on Google.

Is this temporary? I don’t know. I suspect we’re here to stay. Camchat has succeeded and we’re experiencing growing pains.

As most of you know I won’t discuss the money, but I will tell you this much … the website has it’s expenses which I’ve always paid.

My dream has become true and I now have never-ending traffic to my chatroom. This is what I had always worked for. I did it with keyword research and good SEO (search engine optimization). (Google it)

Here’s something I did not expect … more traffic \ more pervs. As the site becomes more popular and starts to grow it looks like we’ll have to make some changes.

I’ll have to agree we are losing the community feel. There is not really a place for the “Regs” to hang, relax, and chat. I know we are losing good regulars because the room has become chaos. Something must be done to maintain a community feel.

Breaking down what I said earlier, the camchat has expenses. It also makes money.

Many of you are aware of Thomas, “Thunderstorm” who owns Vagipe and sponsors our video. He told me in advance that I would get the most ad clicks right below the chatroom. It seems people become bored in the chat and click the links below it. We can see this with the analytic data. It’s important that we have a constant flow into the chat page where people can quickly click away or fit in to become a regular.

We don’t want to do anything to slow down entries to the chatroom.

As it starts to get this much traffic I am saddened that it is losing a community feel and we may be losing valuable regular users.

Because we need as many users as possible hitting the chatroom I’m going to go with Loka’s option #2. I think we should open a #room2.

This would be a room where only “regs” who are sponsored by a mod can enter. I think they would enjoy a room.

Actually I think this is the right direction … let the regulars have a special secret room free of undesirables. It would require little moderation and we could retain valuable community users.

There are things to look at before we do this …

#1 Example .. there would be people requesting their cam from the main room, not the lounge. There would be people talking to them in the main room that they are overlooking .. and how to explain this to the new entry.

#2 There are also problems we may encounter such as “Oh he/she’s cute !! Can I invite him in here ??” and how to deal with that. Sponsoring guidelines?

#3 The secret code is “/join #RoomName” … right ? and you’re not allowed to tell anyone, and you have to have a sponsor … is this where we’re going ?

#4 Another mod just sponsored someone you don’t want in there.

We’d have to address these issues first. You guys come up with the guidelines

This will take some planning and I look forward to you’re input.