TinyChat Takes on Stickam and Ustream With New Service and API
Over the last few months, TinyChat has established itself as a highly popular video chat service. Today, the company launched a new product, TinyChat.tv, which competes directly with established companies like Ustream and Stickam. Signing up and getting started with TinyChat.tv only takes a minute. Users can customize their video chat rooms with different themes, background images and colors. The old TinyChat.com, which doesn't require signups, will continue to work, though users will get access to more features on TinyChat.tv.
Features
TinyChat.tv's interface will feel very familiar if you used the regular TinyChat before.
Room owners can customize the look and feel of their rooms and decide if they want to force users to sign in with their Twitter or Facebook accounts. One feature we really liked on TinyChat was that users could type a random URL (tinychat.com/12345) and the service would automatically create a room with this URL. This feature hasn't been enabled on TinyChat.tv yet, but TinyChat's co-founder Dan Blake tells us that it will come back soon.
For $9.95 per month, users can also buy a pro membership that allows them to set passwords for rooms and stream higher quality video.
For Developers: Free Streaming with TinyChat API
For developers, TinyChat now offers a comprehensive free application programming interface (API) that makes it easy for developers to create their own Ustream clones. Indeed, TinyChat.tv itself was built on top of this API. Earlier today, Dan Blake told us that TinyChat will not charge developers for bandwidth. Stickam currently charges $0.45 per gigabyte for its streamAPI white label service.
Overall, this is a nice upgrade to the regular TinyChat experience. The old TinyChat, where users don't need to sign up will continue to operate. The big development is the API, however, and we are looking forward to seeing what developers will do with it.
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I'd say that photo is pretty much typical of the community I see every time I go there. Add to that a lot of screaming a shit talking and you've pretty much encapsulated TinyChat.