Online Review of the Top Video Chats
The coronavirus pandemic and related ongoing quarantine restrictions have had a major impact on various areas of life. People around the world have lost the opportunity to meet and communicate face to face. So it’s not surprising that the popularity of numerous apps for dating and communication on the Internet has grown significantly.
In particular, video chat sites are once more very popular. This communication format became available in 2009, when eighteen-year-old American Leif K-Brooks presented to the world his “brainchild” — Omegle video chat. It was radically different from all chat platforms existing at that time. The user went to the site, and the system immediately connected them with a random person from anywhere in the world. At first, chat was text only, but in 2010 it was supplemented by a video mode, which had a positive effect on the popularity of the site. In the years following the site almost faded from view due to the influx of bots, fakes and inappropriate content. But now the situation has improved markedly, though there are still questions about moderation.
Omegle — pros and cons
In 2020-2021, Omegle is essentially experiencing quite a renaissance. At almost any time, there are about thirty thousand users online, double the number immediately before the pandemic. Find out more about the features of Omegle and its most popular competitors below.
Omegle offers users several interesting features, including:
- text or video chat
- choice of language
- unmoderated section where you can talk about explicit topics
- chat with other students at your university.
Despite this, the reviews for Omegle are mixed. Although the user base of the site is large, its quality leaves much to be desired. In previous years there was no such thing as moderation. Now, of course, there are moderators, but they can be quite mediocre, so you can easily meet people who are a problem in some way.
Also, users are unhappy with the lack of geographic and gender filters. This is a significant disadvantage: you can’t choose a city or even a country to search for chat partners. Also some users complain about slow connection speeds, while others are not satisfied with the lack of proper applications for mobile devices.
The best video chats: functionality and reviews
Considering all the aforementioned disadvantages, it’s no surprise that users are looking for alternatives to Omegle. We reviewed the most interesting of them.
Shagle
A clone of Omegle which is used by about 3 million people. The site operates in more than seventy countries around the world, and it has the handy geographic filter that Omegle users missed so much. Also, the developers took care of adding a gender filter. Among other interesting features, it’s worth noting virtual gifts that can be given to each other, as well as “face-blur”, which blurs your face on the screen of your chat partner.
Overall, reviews for Shagle are positive. But not everyone is happy with the need to pay for access to the gender filter, the ability to reconnect to a previous chat partner, send gifts and turn off advertising.
Tinychat
This is no ordinary chat service. It was originally created as a streaming platform on which it was possible to make video broadcasts in real time. But there weren’t many people who wanted to use such a platform, so the developers closed the site and relaunched it. This time around, Tinychat has become a video chat site with many themed chat rooms.
All that is needed for communication is to create your own room and invite viewers to it. 12 people can take an active part in a conversation within a room, while the number of passive observers is not limited. To increase the popularity of a room, you can use a promotion service. That’s not free, of course. Tinychat users are generally satisfied with the functionality and operation of the site, as evidenced by the many rave reviews on the Internet.
CooMeet
Perhaps one of the best video chat options for men who want to meet and chat exclusively with girls. A unique gender filter has been implemented here, due to which the system connects chat partners only with members of the opposite sex.
The indisputable advantage of CooMeet is the absence of fakes, bots and advertising accounts. There’s only a live audience interested in meeting and communicating. This was achieved due to compulsory identity verification, which each user goes through when registering. Another plus noted by users in the CooMeet review is a handy mobile application for iOS and Android.
If we talk about the cons, there’s only one, and that’s the need to pay for a premium account to access all the features. But free trial access is given to all new users.
Camsurf
We’ll wrap up our review with Camsurf web chat — another anonymous and completely free video chat in which you can choose your language and select your gender. The site has a particularly useful feature — “Safe Search”, which uses a special algorithm to filter out adult content. Thanks to this feature, you can be sure that when you connect to a chat with a stranger, there will be no surprise in the form of naked body parts.
Also, the site has implemented a user blocking function, which can be used if communication with anyone has become uncomfortable.
Which video chat service?
Naturally, we’ve listed only a small number of the popular video chat sites. The early success of Omegle inspired developers so much that clones began to appear at a feverish pace. The ones we mention in this review have garnered the most positive user reviews and are generally safe. Still, you should not stop being vigilant
The choice of which video chat to stop at is always yours. And besides, why stick with one resource when you can use several at once. After all, the more video chat services you use, the wider your search and the higher the chance of finding someone who can become your friend or even your soul mate. So choose two or three video chat apps and switch between them as you feel like it.
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