The phenomenon has drawn researchers' attention. Oovoo's affordability, accessibility and multi-party support encourages teens to video chat as much as they want.
#OOVOO CHATS TV#
When a friend lost TV access for disciplinary reasons, De Luca helped the girl watch a favorite show by pointing her laptop at her own TV, essentially streaming the show through ooVoo. De Luca uses ooVoo for group study sessions and to demonstrate hair and makeup styles to her friends. Teens aren't just tapping ooVoo to chat face-to-face when they can't be together in person. Some of those experiences are surprisingly creative. "We're enhancing experiences our users have already discovered and taking them back into ooVoo," Jackman explains. Those features will launch later this year. The service's next features, which will focus on content-sharing and making video chats more social experiences, were based on feedback from teen users, according to Jackman. The company has a closed group on Facebook that it regularly polls for ideas. "We want to be at the forefront of how people are connecting with each other," said Robert Jackman, ooVoo's executive chairman, in an interview.
#OOVOO CHATS UPGRADE#
But while the company concedes young people aren't likely to upgrade to its premium service, it is proud of its teen cult status. Oovoo does not disclose its financials or the percentage of its users that pay for its service and may not yet be profitable. Skype, which was recently acquired by Microsoft, and Apple might point out that hosting free, multi-party, multi-device video chats isn't likely to generate profits. Monthly rates range from $4.49 to $8.99, depending on subscription length.) (The daily rate for Skype Premium is $4.99. Skype supports group video calls but charges for the feature. Oovoo operates on the freemium model, offering a free, ad-supported service as well as more feature-rich, ad-free services that range from $9.95 to $29.95 a month. The other important factor for teens like De Luca is that they can use ooVoo without paying anything. De Luca says her mother "approves of" ooVoo.) "Oovoo feels more secure." (The setup helps win parental permission, too. Among her friends, Skype gets likened to the no-longer-cool social networking site MySpace.ĭe Luca also sees ooVoo as a safer environment than Skype since people need to be on an approved "contact list" to communicate with each other. "On Facebook, everyone says, 'What's your oovoo ?'” De Luca reports. Skype, she says, seems to cater to an older audience and business users.
Oovoo is "newer and fresher," she contends.
Similarly, though Skype is the world's biggest video chat provider, De Luca favors oovoo.
#OOVOO CHATS ANDROID#
Oovoo works on Macs, PCs, iPhones and Android phones.
#OOVOO CHATS SOFTWARE#
As a Mac and iPad user, De Luca occasionally uses Apple's FaceTime software for video calls but says she doesn't like how FaceTime limits chats to one other participant and to Apple devices. This feature is key for De Luca, who typically chats with two or three other friends at once. The company routes video calls through the cloud using a server, which it says allows it to conserve bandwidth and adjust the video to fit different devices, whether over Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G. Oovoo calls can support up to 12 participants on a paid subscription and up to 6 participants for free. The ooVoo logo was designed to look like two sets of eyes peering at each other.
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