Paltalk Adds Screening Rooms to Webcams

Paltalk, the video chat company, is releasing a beta product today called PaltalkScene. The service allows up to 5,000 people with webcams to get together and watch videos.

The technology offered is not that compelling, especially for this Mac user. A Windows-only download is required, and you have to pay $15 per month or $60 per year if you want to see other participant’s webcams while you chat (the standard Paltalk pricing). Users who want to screen their own video have to upload it to Paltalk rather than embed it from somewhere else (though Paltalk is cutting deals with companies like ManiaTV and blip.tv to syndicate their content). For that price, I’d rather use Meebo’s web-based text chat rooms with multimedia sharing.

Something cool Paltalk is exploring, though, is the development of original reality shows and live concerts. If the content were especially compelling and the audience were especially passionate, a web screening room could be a hotbed of activity. Joel Smernoff, president and COO of Paltalk, told us in a recent briefing that the company would be launching shows over the next couple of months including a celebrity talk show, and then potentially “second-chance versions of reality shows, where people voted off America’s Next Top Model can go live from their living rooms with judges live from their living rooms.” Now that could be fun.