Pictures of young girls wearing revealing clothes appeared
several times in sponsored contents on Facebook timeline. I have been
living up a habit of ignoring such cheap ads in fears of phisings and
other marketing traps.
But, I did note the apps: Nono Live and Bigo Live. Both
appeared the same and seemed to offer similar service, interactive
chatrooms.
It began with a blogwalking when I stumbled into a blog
post from a blogger who did a full week tryout on such apps and
concluded that those broadcasting service are nothing but platform to advertise porn and disguised prostitution. Such judgmental verdict intrigued me
so much and prompted me to give it a try.
I installed NonoLive in my cellphone and did chatroom
strolling. To my surprise, the service requires no sign in to enter the
room at any time (Recently, they require sign in with Twitter, Google and Facebook account in an apparent ploy to get rid of anonymity).
I can understand the blogger I read his writing that
made a comparison between the apps and glass-window showcases at a
brothel.
Why not? Some heavily photoshop-ed cover pictures of the
broadcasters might have disappointed visitors upon entering every room.
Most of the time, the broadcaster appearance is way way less
illustrious, not to say ugly. It is becoming evident that most
broadcasters are not ready to fill the rooms with interesting attraction
to keep the audience amused and stay in the room. Some make visitors
turned off with random rants and requests of gifts from the visitors. On
the other hand, some visitors go nasty, seducing the broadcaster with
cat calling to blatant sexual harassment.
Even though some warning
message line keep popping up notifying that activities such as posing
nudity, smoking activity, are strictly forbidden inside the chatrooms,
yet people seem not really care much about it. Probably, most people
think that the service is anonymous and requires no sign in whatsoever,
even though the broadcasters have the right to block some audience
proven violating the rules.
Setting aside all those downsides, I did find some
potentials that the apps might promise big things in the near future. I
noticed some broadcasters did some good jobs to keep the audience in
their rooms with good conversation and topics. Some personalities won
many hearts with their natural chitchats and therefore earned abundant
gifts as token of appreciation from the room visitors.
I imagine what if the apps are used by some lecturers to do
some live class simultaneously with students sign in into the room and
let the students who attend the virtual rooms could raise questions any
time from anywhere in the world from their cell phone? What if the
broadcasters are preachers who use the fora as virtual pulpits.Time surely will tell.