Self broadcasting apps. Can we use them better than merely advertising porn, prostitution?


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.

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