Aiming at making its incumbent 750,000 users around the world into five million in the next two years, ANYwebcam.com is launching its third-generation video, voice, and text chat Website.
This third-generation launch involves new technology surpassing videophones, with new speed and quality Webcame conduit. The company says in its announcement that they plan leveraging the new technology to make new general and special-interest Websites as well as live video for handheld computers and cellular telephones. ANYwebcam says this technology can accommodate up to ten million users.
With independent surveyor Hitwise estimating it the world's most popular Webcam chat community, ANYwebcam "has become a lifestyle enjoyed by everyday people from over 100 countries that appeals to the voyeur or exhibitionist in us all," ANYwebcam says in its announcement. "Often likened to a real city, ANYwebcam.com is a place where friendships are formed, relationships tested, marriages proposed, broken and reinvigorated, and all the other dynamics associated with three quarters of a million people living vicariously out of each others' lives - sprinkled with a healthy dose of sexual tension - just like everyday life in any community."
The site is accessible with low-cost Webcams, personal computers, and standard Internet connections, with over 20,000 hours each week worth of real people broadcasting themselves in 160 interest categories from swinging to sailing, from bird watching to bondage, as ANYwebcam puts it. But it's not entirely a free-for-all, the company says. "Because there are controls to keep a 'naughty but nice' safe and respectful culture within the website, the highly-coveted female and couple markets are attracted to ANYwebcam.com."
The company says 35 percent of its current membership is women, with 30 percent as couples, and the average age being 30 plus. ANYwebcam began operating in June 2000 and spread almost entirely by word-of-mouth referral, picking up 10,000 members in their first six months and going to over 750,000 less than three years later, with an estimated 4,000-person growth a day now.
"Members of this community find the combination of being able to watch, talk, show, chat and interact live with people around the world, addictive," ANYwebcam says. "In fact, there are many people who spend 12 hours or more on the site each day because the reality and spontaneity mean they don't want to miss anything."
The audience and the broadcasters are as diverse as diverse can get. They include, ANYwebcam says, a scientist by day and a nudist by night who communicates with others in his profession with similar inclinations; an offshore oil worker who uses ANYwebcam for virtual conjugal visits with his wife; and, a South Carolina woman who met an Australian man on ANYwebcam and married him, with the ceremony broadcast live on the medium through which they met.
Earlier this month, ANYwebcam announced improvements in chat sorting, thumbnails, and performance. Members can now sort chat rooms alphabetically or by the number of people in the room at the time. Gold and Silver membership users have access to faster and lower-error thumbnails. And ANYwebcam joined their 1GB Internet link to their two 100MB links for "twelve times the bandwidth" of the second version of the site. They now have, also, three camservers with perhaps two more to come online in the near future, as well as four Web servers with another one or two coming online likewise. "Outages and other issues which plagued us since transition from (version 2) are becoming less frequent as the final steps of this plan are being put into place," ANYwebcam says.
For more information or to give it a try for yourself, visit ANYwebcam.com on the Web.
