TinyChat is the New Hangout Spot

We covered TinyChat back in February, where I explained how it could be the glue to your social networking activity. Tinychat has definitely come a long way since then and gained a lot of popularity. The secret is in it’s simplicity. No account sign-up. Creating a live chat room with video is almost as simple as typing your name.

Besides having a one-on-one Skype-like video conversation, you can do video chat with multiple participants. If you ever did Yahoo Voice Chat back in the day (don’t act like you didn’t), it’s like that…except with video. I took this screenshot in a room called “badgirlsclub” (don’t ask).

As you can see, you have your video at the top and your regular text chat at the bottom. Unlike something like Ustream, where an individual is the center of attention, multiple participants can be seen and heard on Tinychat. The creator of the room decides whether you need an account to participate. Your choices are a Tinychat account, Twitter, or Facebook. What you end up with is a bunch of people hanging out.

Tinychat’s traffic continues to grow and they continue to add features. Video has only been available for about 2 months or so at the time of this writing and p2p abilities for video chat went live a couple weeks ago. Just a couple of days ago, they polished the site up a bit and modified their logo. Not only is it simple to create and share your video/audio-enabled chat room, but you can embed it on any website. It’s a powerful service and, apparently, people are taking notice.

Even though some seem content to simply stare at each other and others seem to enjoy the echo that results from them having their volume up too loud, I’m still excited about this service. I can see many applications where it would come in handy, from temporary discussion forums resulting from Twitter to impromptu freestyle rap battles. The possibilities are endless.