Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid

Re:Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid by breck on Saturday February 13, 2010 @02:28PM (#1123387)

This has been the fastest growing site I've seen in a while.

One interesting sidenote: the word "roulette" is terribly hard to spell. Pretty much every typo domain for it got snatched up pretty quickly, and are currently showing AdSense for domains. (chatroullette.com, chatroulete.com, etc.)

Probably making a solid amount of money. I hope the owner himself is the one sitting on them.

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Re:Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid by hussong on Saturday February 13, 2010 @03:52PM (#1123531)

It's only hard to spell if you have no clue about french ;-)

Here's a memory hook:

- "ou" because that's french for "oo", as in: douche.

- "l" since it comes from "roule" or "rouler", as in: joule, boule (there is no "ll" between "ou" and "e" in french, ever).

- "tt" since it's a female noun, as in: cassette, baguette, couchette.

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Re:Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid by eam on Saturday February 13, 2010 @04:36PM (#1123601)

Well I think most visitors don't know French, as the article indicates most are from the US. Even I misspelled the domain on my first try. doh!

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Re:Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid by hussong on Monday February 15, 2010 @06:44AM (#1126382)

Honestly, it took me a minute to realize that the overlap between French and English is actually smaller than I thought (and much smaller than between English and German). I had a hard time coming up with sticky analogies for the spelling of "roulette".

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Re:Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid by shib71 on Saturday February 13, 2010 @04:16PM (#1123570)

That would be an interesting advertising model.

Keep the main application advertisement free, but buy up all the doppelgangers and advertise on those.

Diabolical.

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Re:Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid by ajg1977 on Saturday February 13, 2010 @09:06PM (#1123977)

And how exactly would that work?

Every time a user, or potential user, mistypes your URL then best case they end up on some keyword related site. Worst case - they end up visiting some adword-buying competitor.

If it's more profitable to direct users away from your site than to visit there's a problem with your business model.

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Re:Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid by _delirium on Saturday February 13, 2010 @05:40PM (#1123696)

As a counterpoint to the dumb users googling for "facebook login" and typing their password into the site that was the first hit, here's a case where the people who get to chatroulette by googling for it come out ahead, because Google corrects the obvious typos and brings up the real site as the first result. ;-)

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Re:Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid by hyperbovine on Saturday February 13, 2010 @06:06PM (#1123734)

I assume for a Russian, roulette is easier to spell. :-)

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Re:Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid by mofey on Saturday February 13, 2010 @09:03PM (#1123972)

made my day! P.S.: I'm Russian :D

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Re:Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid by qeorge on Saturday February 13, 2010 @08:49PM (#1123951)

Probably making a solid amount of money.

Having shamefully owned a few typo domains in the past, I can confirm this is true. The ad click-through rate on typo domains is absurdly high (~33% IME), probably because the ad is for the domain they intended to visit.

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Re:Chatroulette Creator Is A 17-Year-Old Russian Kid by JoshRosen on Saturday February 13, 2010 @04:05PM (#1123554)

The site is also accessible at chatrt.com.

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