#Live Chat Software Benefits

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How to Select the Ideal Live Chat Software for Customer Support

Introduction to Choosing Live Chat Software

In today’s fast-paced digital environment, providing immediate and effective customer support has become crucial for businesses of all sizes. Live chat software has emerged as a key tool in achieving this goal, offering real-time assistance and improving customer satisfaction. But with so many options available, how do I choose live chat software for customer support that’s right for my business? In this article, we will explore the essential factors to consider, from core features to implementation strategies, to help you make an informed decision.

What is Live Chat Software?

Live chat software allows businesses to communicate with their customers in real-time directly on their website. This tool can significantly enhance the customer service experience by providing immediate answers and solutions, thus reducing wait times and improving customer satisfaction.

Why is Live Chat Crucial for Customer Support?

The importance of live chat cannot be overstated. It not only provides immediate assistance and reduces abandonment rates but also increases sales and customer loyalty by offering a personalized customer service experience.

Core Features to Look for in Live Chat Software

When choosing live chat software, it’s essential to look for certain core features that can significantly impact your customer support efficiency and effectiveness.

User-Friendly Interface: The software should be easy for both your team and your customers to use.

Integration Capabilities: Ensure the software can seamlessly integrate with your existing systems such as CRM, email, and help desk tools.

Real-Time Support and Analytics: Access to real-time support and detailed analytics helps in understanding customer needs and improving service.

Customization and Branding: The ability to customize and brand the chat interface to match your website enhances the customer experience.

How Do I Choose Live Chat Software for Customer Support?

Choosing the right live chat software involves assessing your business needs, comparing different solutions, considering security measures, and evaluating the level of customer service provided by the vendor.

Assessing Your Business Needs: Understand the specific needs of your business and customers before beginning your search.

Comparing Pricing and Plans: Look for a solution that offers the features you need within your budget.

Security and Compliance: Ensure the software complies with relevant regulations and standards to protect customer data.

Evaluating Customer Service and Support: Choose a provider known for excellent customer service and support to ensure any issues are quickly resolved.

Implementing Live Chat Software

Once you’ve chosen software, the next steps involve training your team, setting up automated responses, and continuously monitoring and improving your live chat services.

Training Your Team: Ensure your staff is well-trained to use the new software effectively.

Setting Up Automated Responses: Automated responses can help manage customer expectations and provide immediate assistance when live agents are unavailable.

Monitoring and Improving: Regularly monitor the performance of your live chat service and make improvements as needed.

FAQ:

Your Live Chat Software Questions Answered

How does live chat software improve customer service?

Live chat software significantly enhances customer service by providing real-time assistance directly on your website. This means your customers can get immediate answers to their questions without having to leave your site, wait on hold, or navigate through multiple support pages. It leads to a quicker resolution of issues, increases customer satisfaction, and can even boost sales as customers feel more confident and supported in their purchasing decisions.

Can live chat software integrate with other tools I use?

Yes, many live chat software options can integrate seamlessly with other tools and platforms that your business uses, such as CRM systems, email marketing services, and social media platforms. This integration allows for a more unified approach to customer service and support, ensuring that all customer interactions are logged and accessible across different platforms, enhancing the efficiency of your support team.

What are the key features to look for in live chat software?

When selecting live chat software, look for features such as:

Customization: Ability to customize the chat interface to match your brand.

Automation and AI: Automated greetings and chatbots that can handle common queries.

Analytics and Reporting: Insights into chat volume, response times, and customer satisfaction.

Integration: Compatibility with other tools and platforms you use.

Mobile Support: Ensuring the chat works seamlessly across all devices.

Security: Strong encryption and data protection features.

How much does live chat software typically cost?

The cost of live chat software can vary widely based on the features, scale, and vendor. Some providers offer basic services for free, while premium plans can range from $20 to $150 per month per agent. It’s important to consider what features are essential for your business and to choose a plan that fits your budget while meeting your needs.

Can I customize the appearance of the live chat window?

Yes, most live chat software allows you to customize the appearance of the chat window. This includes changing colors, adding your logo, and modifying the chat buttons to match your company’s branding and website design, ensuring a consistent user experience for your customers.

How can I measure the success of my live chat support?

Measuring the success of your live chat support can be done through various metrics such as customer satisfaction scores, response time, resolution time, and chat volume. Additionally, many live chat software options provide built-in analytics and reporting tools that allow you to track these metrics over time. Monitoring these indicators helps you identify areas for improvement and assess the overall impact of live chat on your customer service.

Conclusion:

Enhancing Customer Experience with the Right Live Chat Software

Choosing the right live chat software is a critical decision that can significantly impact your customer support effectiveness and overall customer satisfaction. By considering the factors discussed above — core features, integration capabilities, security, and the level of customer service provided — you can select a solution that best fits your business needs and enhances your customer support experience.

Live chat software is not just a tool for communication; it’s an investment in your company’s future and a commitment to providing the best possible service to your customers. By selecting the right software, training your team effectively, and continuously monitoring and improving your live chat services, you can create a more engaging, responsive, and customer-friendly environment.

The benefits of implementing the right live chat software extend beyond improved customer service; they also include increased sales, better customer retention, and a stronger brand reputation. Therefore, take the time to choose wisely, implement thoughtfully, and continuously strive for excellence in your customer support efforts.

Remember, live chat software aims to provide swift, efficient, and personalized service to your customers. By achieving this, you not only meet their immediate needs but also build long-term relationships that are based on trust and satisfaction.

[insert-something-funy-here]

MUEHEHEHE >:)

CHAT IT'S SILLIES TIME!!!!

For those who didn't see before I deleted it, sometime ago, I made a post about an idea for an AU I have where Biograft is sentient enough for Medkit leaving Blackrock to affect him (and on top of that, that's how he discovers his own sentience). I spent a couple hours writing cus I got inspired! Biograft doesn't yet realize he's sentient, so I think (if people like thus enough) I'll make a pt2 to this cus I have ideas for where this could go!! (Tbh, I'll probably do it regardless of if people like it or not, but still!!!)

An error. A simple miscalculation. Making breakfast for two, when there was only one here who could eat. Opening the door to an empty, and uncharacteristically tidy, room. No phighter for me to wake. Green flowers at the bedside now wilting from missing… from his absence. It was odd how he would “heal,” them every other morning. I don't have such an ability, being created for the opposite of healing. Most iterations of me anyway.

I should throw those away before they begin to rot. It’s been a week now. Or I could leave them. Perhaps after such long-term exposure to his crystal, they will last longer regular flowers. That’s all this is, testing a hypothesis. I can leave them a little longer, just to see the results.

New connections have started forming in my programming. One of me was out collecting materials for Subspace, and I saw those flowers again. When I saw them, what came to mind wasn’t any data about it, not its place of origin, ideal habitat, or its potential uses, but the memory of seeing Medkit reverse the effects of time on the ones he kept. Yet another odd error.

I asked Subspace to help me troubleshoot these recent errors. We came to the same conclusion of there being something in my software. He checked, said that my algorithms had been evolving rapidly and creating a new type of data, which could have been overwhelming the system and causing these errors. But what caused that spike in complexity? The only thing to have changed recently outside of myself is that his presence is no longer here. Subspace hasn’t given me any new updates, and such drastic change has never happened without Subspace’s intervention before. There is no reason for me to have change unless my creator requests it or it is within his benefit for me to do so on my own time. This isn’t benefiting anyone, so why is it happening? And why didn’t Subspace fix me?

He said even though he himself had no idea of the catalyst of these changes, with refinement, they gave the opportunity to lead a wonderful new breakthrough in regards to creating and manipulating life. Yet I find myself still unable to understand, which only in turn creates further lack of understanding. How am I unable to see what it is my creator wants from me? Why don’t I understand the results he wishes for?

Why do I ask and hesitate now instead of proceeding onward as I always have?

What makes life?

The definition I was programmed with was, “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.”

Am I alive?

I fit 2.5 of the important descriptors. I have the capacity for artificial change and growth (but it is not continual) and functional activity. I have the ability to die. To its simplest point, is living not just the absence of death?

Perhaps I mean to ask if I have sentience?

Is there a difference between chemical and code if they both have the potential to react irrationally to stimulus, be it internal or external?

Could this metal exterior be made metaphorical flesh?

One of me was out at the Crossroads today. I saw him, yet I did not attack. He is a wanted traitor, and I had the opportunity to pursue him, yet I didn’t. He saw me, and he didn’t run, even though he should have.

When I saw him, I thought of those flowers again. It’s been a month now. They’ve dried out but haven’t rotted yet. I should’ve thrown those away the same way I should’ve gone after him, without hesitation.

For some reason, part of me wanted to follow him, not to bring him back, but to see how he is now. Perhaps he would be able to explain why I’ve changed. What a strange hypothesis. Perhaps one worth further investigation.

It’s happened a few more times now. It’s been 4 months since his leave. Every time I see him, I act as though I haven't. I believe he’s caught on that I do it on purpose. I don’t know why I have this inability to approach him first. I think this “test” ends here. How unsatisfactory, with no results to show for it.

Is this cowardice? I think I better understand the concept outside of its definition now.

He stopped me as I went to leave this time. He pulled me aside into a nearby alley. Why? We stared at one another in an uncomfortable silence. Could silence be comfortable?

He asked me what I was doing. I asked him to clarify. He asked why I hadn’t been trying to go after him whenever Subspace wasn't around. I had no response. I moved on and told him something within me changed, but I couldn’t figure out what. He seemed confused but told me to continue. I told him about the errors, some of my questions, and about the flowers.

Something in the way he looked at me changed. He understood something about me that I did not. I couldn’t recognize what it was he held towards me with his gaze, but he stepped closer, and I let him

Innocent hands, covered in blood, not mine or its own, that wished to hold onto me. Sorrow grips us both.

I flew away to a false sky before my wings could be fully clipped, but left you, a fish in a bird cage. I can't take you to the water, but let me bring you drops of the sea.

“Even you need to rest and grieve… I missed you too.”

New ideas I had yet to understand.

I felt his arms wrap around me and an intense sensation rushed through me, it wore at me, as the waves do to a coastline, until I was left with nothing but the soothing sounds of the ocean.

[etirabys]

// if you want to discourse about this, plz make your own post

I’ve lived in a different world from women who say that sexism is a normal part of their lives. Despite growing up in a conservative country and going into software for a living, I never felt I was treated very differently for being female. Probably some of this is not noticing little stuff, some of it is aggressive filtering (I have a low tolerance for the kinds of stupidity that are correlated with inegalitarian attitudes), some of it is class privilege.

There’s one incident, however, that really stands out in my mind as an Uncomfortable Gender Incident that’s lodged in like a little splinter in my psyche. I was twenty three, and attending a meetup hosted by David Friedman. I loved the crowd, I loved talking about philosophy and econ, and I was one of the last dozen or so to stay lateish into the night sitting around the table. I was one of the three remaining women, and both of the others (one of them David Friedman’s daughter, iirc) started cleaning up.

I had enjoyed the host’s generosity for many hours. My very strong instinct was to get up and start helping. And I was suddenly and excruciatingly aware of gender. I was aware that if I did this, all the men would be talking and all the women would be cleaning up. And I was absolutely opposed to bringing this world about.

So I sat there, not enjoying the conversation anymore, tortured by my perceived failure as a guest, simmering with complicated anger at the men around me who were chatting away so blithely. How could I not be sympathetic to the desire to keep talking about the same passions that had made us congregate here in the first place? How could I not judge them for lacking certain prosocial drives, which would naturally benefit them at the expense of people with those drives?

(I was young and shy and it did not occur to me to simply say, “Hey, let’s help clean up, anyone want to round up the dishes over there?” They would have done it, I’m sure. They were not impolite people. They just... didn’t work like I did.)

(Honestly, this may be a culture thing and not a gender thing – I got the Asian son treatment growing up, I never helped out in the kitchen at home. I just have strong feelings about what being a guest means.)

Uh, I wish I had a clean ending to this post. I don’t. It’s really not a big deal, it was an anomaly in my life, but I still feel a bit confused and hurt when I remember it.

[hamncheddar]

I miss IRL streaming. I’m gonna put this rig back to use next week while I have a visitor in town. In my experience, IRL streaming doesn’t have to look bad on a phone. Here’s some nerd shit about IRL streaming and why I have my setup the way that I do.

The standard for IRL these days is a LiveU encoder with a few 4G/5G modems connected to it. The benefit of this setup is not only using multiple connections, but it allows you to max out the quality of the camera you use for IRL. It allows you to use anything from a GoPro to a DSLR / Mirrorless camera for IRL. The liveU takes that camera’s HDMI or SDI output and sends it over the connections of the modems to a destination: typically a server somewhere that is running streaming software like you would at home to stream on Twitch or YouTube. Using this server (IRLToolkit for example) adds the benefit of automatically switching scenes to a "be right back" scene if your internet connection ever dips on the go. While this is the "standard" for IRL, the barrier for entry is pretty steep. The LiveU alone will run you $1k new, maybe $700-$800 used. Then, for it to be even worth the investment, you'd want to bridge at least two modem's connections which can be anywhere north of $40 a month per modem. That intermediate server will also run you a decent amount of money per month. I haven't sworn off the idea of adopting this standard some time in the future but for now, I am running a setup on a phone that has admittedly gotten to the point where I should have just done so ages ago. I use my iPhone 12 pro max for IRL, but on that phone I use an app called Prism to stream to IRLToolkit (just like the big boys do) over RTMP, rather than just streaming directly to twitch from, say, the streamlabs app. The video quality on an iPhone 13 pro max holds up to that of a high quality camera, as long as the right software and tinkering is behind it. The audio codec and noise cancellation on Prism do a good job with keeping the audio crisp, but I've recently made the addition of DJI's new lav mic system. I have yet to test this live, but I have used it just in the iPhone's camera app and it sounds great. Then, there is the gimbal. I am currently running the DJI osmo moblie 5. A lightweight stabilizer is something that even those running the LiveU setup don't have. On the left, I have an old pixel 3 running chat, alerts, and the IRLToolkit dashboard all at the same time. Since this requires very little data, this is doable just with a pay-as-you-go SIM card. Lastly, the box jutting off on the left is a LumeCube that is mounted in a cold shoe mounting block. This is just a small LED panel that I can spin away or toward me to keep my subject lit. Not pictured: I've got a JBL clip speaker to strap to my chest, which runs alerts and TTS (which I get in trouble for in public all the time. Shoutout to the guy who played a TTS out loud while I was in the security line at TwitchCon Amsterdam saying I volunteered for a cavity search). All said and done, the Gimbal costs $140, the extra phone plan costs maybe $30 a month depending on usage. The (unnecessary) mic system is $300. I do have a discount on the intermediate server with IRLToolkit because I know the guy who runs it (sue me - it's normally $120 a month and I won't say what I pay). You could run this same setup on the Prism app to stream directly to Twitch or YouTube, so the intermediate server service can be avoided (at the cost of your stream possibly going down when you lose connection). The upfront cost is really low and the ongoing cost is also relatively low. For someone that wants a better-than-average IRL setup, I think that going down a route like this or similar is something people should explore. It requires the least amount of knowledge for a relatively low amount of money. If you want to watch this stuff in action, as well as my studio space where I run my own twitch production full time - I'm live at http://www.twitch.tv/hamncheddar ched.tv for other socials

[0x7b]

Omegle has been shut down.

Posting here for posterity. Retrieved directly from omegle.com on Nov 8 2023

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” — Douglas Adams

Dear strangers,

From the moment I discovered the Internet at a young age, it has been a magical place to me. Growing up in a small town, relatively isolated from the larger world, it was a revelation how much more there was to discover – how many interesting people and ideas the world had to offer.

As a young teenager, I couldn’t just waltz onto a college campus and tell a student: “Let’s debate moral philosophy!” I couldn’t walk up to a professor and say: “Tell me something interesting about microeconomics!” But online, I was able to meet those people, and have those conversations. I was also an avid Wikipedia editor; I contributed to open source software projects; and I often helped answer computer programming questions posed by people many years older than me.

In short, the Internet opened the door to a much larger, more diverse, and more vibrant world than I would have otherwise been able to experience; and enabled me to be an active participant in, and contributor to, that world. All of this helped me to learn, and to grow into a more well-rounded person.

Moreover, as a survivor of childhood rape, I was acutely aware that any time I interacted with someone in the physical world, I was risking my physical body. The Internet gave me a refuge from that fear. I was under no illusion that only good people used the Internet; but I knew that, if I said “no” to someone online, they couldn’t physically reach through the screen and hold a weapon to my head, or worse. I saw the miles of copper wires and fiber-optic cables between me and other people as a kind of shield – one that empowered me to be less isolated than my trauma and fear would have otherwise allowed.

I launched Omegle when I was 18 years old, and still living with my parents. It was meant to build on the things I loved about the Internet, while introducing a form of social spontaneity that I felt didn’t exist elsewhere. If the Internet is a manifestation of the “global village”, Omegle was meant to be a way of strolling down a street in that village, striking up conversations with the people you ran into along the way.

The premise was rather straightforward: when you used Omegle, it would randomly place you in a chat with someone else. These chats could be as long or as short as you chose. If you didn’t want to talk to a particular person, for whatever reason, you could simply end the chat and – if desired – move onto another chat with someone else. It was the idea of “meeting new people” distilled down to almost its platonic ideal.

Building on what I saw as the intrinsic safety benefits of the Internet, users were anonymous to each other by default. This made chats more self-contained, and made it less likely that a malicious person would be able to track someone else down off-site after their chat ended.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I launched Omegle. Would anyone even care about some Web site that an 18 year old kid made in his bedroom in his parents’ house in Vermont, with no marketing budget? But it became popular almost instantly after launch, and grew organically from there, reaching millions of daily users. I believe this had something to do with meeting new people being a basic human need, and with Omegle being among the best ways to fulfill that need. As the saying goes: “If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.”

Over the years, people have used Omegle to explore foreign cultures; to get advice about their lives from impartial third parties; and to help alleviate feelings of loneliness and isolation. I’ve even heard stories of soulmates meeting on Omegle, and getting married. Those are only some of the highlights.

Unfortunately, there are also lowlights. Virtually every tool can be used for good or for evil, and that is especially true of communication tools, due to their innate flexibility. The telephone can be used to wish your grandmother “happy birthday”, but it can also be used to call in a bomb threat. There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes.

I believe in a responsibility to be a “good Samaritan”, and to implement reasonable measures to fight crime and other misuse. That is exactly what Omegle did. In addition to the basic safety feature of anonymity, there was a great deal of moderation behind the scenes, including state-of-the-art AI operating in concert with a wonderful team of human moderators. Omegle punched above its weight in content moderation, and I’m proud of what we accomplished.

Omegle’s moderation even had a positive impact beyond the site. Omegle worked with law enforcement agencies, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to help put evildoers in prison where they belong. There are “people” rotting behind bars right now thanks in part to evidence that Omegle proactively collected against them, and tipped the authorities off to.

All that said, the fight against crime isn’t one that can ever truly be won. It’s a never-ending battle that must be fought and re-fought every day; and even if you do the very best job it is possible for you to do, you may make a sizable dent, but you won’t “win” in any absolute sense of that word. That’s heartbreaking, but it’s also a basic lesson of criminology, and one that I think the vast majority of people understand on some level. Even superheroes, the fictional characters that our culture imbues with special powers as a form of wish fulfillment in the fight against crime, don’t succeed at eliminating crime altogether.

In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery. Maybe that has something to do with the pandemic, or with political disagreements. Whatever the reason, people have become faster to attack, and slower to recognize each other’s shared humanity. One aspect of this has been a constant barrage of attacks on communication services, Omegle included, based on the behavior of a malicious subset of users.

To an extent, it is reasonable to question the policies and practices of any place where crime has occurred. I have always welcomed constructive feedback; and indeed, Omegle implemented a number of improvements based on such feedback over the years. However, the recent attacks have felt anything but constructive. The only way to please these people is to stop offering the service. Sometimes they say so, explicitly and avowedly; other times, it can be inferred from their act of setting standards that are not humanly achievable. Either way, the net result is the same.

Omegle is the direct target of these attacks, but their ultimate victim is you: all of you out there who have used, or would have used, Omegle to improve your lives, and the lives of others. When they say Omegle shouldn’t exist, they are really saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to use it; that you shouldn’t be allowed to meet random new people online. That idea is anathema to the ideals I cherish – specifically, to the bedrock principle of a free society that, when restrictions are imposed to prevent crime, the burden of those restrictions must not be targeted at innocent victims or potential victims of crime.

Consider the idea that society ought to force women to dress modestly in order to prevent rape. One counter-argument is that rapists don’t really target women based on their clothing; but a more powerful counter-argument is that, irrespective of what rapists do, women’s rights should remain intact. If society robs women of their rights to bodily autonomy and self-expression based on the actions of rapists – even if it does so with the best intentions in the world – then society is practically doing the work of rapists for them.

Fear can be a valuable tool, guiding us away from danger. However, fear can also be a mental cage that keeps us from all of the things that make life worth living. Individuals and families must be allowed to strike the right balance for themselves, based on their own unique circumstances and needs. A world of mandatory fear is a world ruled by fear – a dark place indeed.

I’ve done my best to weather the attacks, with the interests of Omegle’s users – and the broader principle – in mind. If something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden, what’s next? That is far and away removed from anything that could be considered a reasonable compromise of the principle I outlined. Analogies are a limited tool, but a physical-world analogy might be shutting down Central Park because crime occurs there – or perhaps more provocatively, destroying the universe because it contains evil. A healthy, free society cannot endure when we are collectively afraid of each other to this extent.

Unfortunately, what is right doesn’t always prevail. As much as I wish circumstances were different, the stress and expense of this fight – coupled with the existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse – are simply too much. Operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically. Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s.

The battle for Omegle has been lost, but the war against the Internet rages on. Virtually every online communication service has been subject to the same kinds of attack as Omegle; and while some of them are much larger companies with much greater resources, they all have their breaking point somewhere. I worry that, unless the tide turns soon, the Internet I fell in love with may cease to exist, and in its place, we will have something closer to a souped-up version of TV – focused largely on passive consumption, with much less opportunity for active participation and genuine human connection. If that sounds like a bad idea to you, please consider donating to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that fights for your rights online.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who used Omegle for positive purposes, and to everyone who contributed to the site’s success in any way. I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep fighting for you.

Sincerely, Leif K-Brooks Founder, Omegle.com LLC

[dealsdart]

Navigating the Virtual Workspace: An In-Depth Exploration of Live Chat Jobs - Earn $37 to $40 per Hour from the Comfort of Your Home

Live Chat Jobs - Earn $37 to $40 per Hour from the Comfort of Your Home

INTRODUCTION

In today's digital age, the way we work has drastically changed. With the advent of technology, many traditional job roles have transformed into virtual opportunities that can be pursued from the comfort of our own homes. One such job that has gained immense popularity is that of a live chat agent. In this article, we will take a closer look at live chat jobs, exploring what they entail and how you can earn a competitive wage of $37 to $40 per hour.

So, what exactly is a live chat job? Well, imagine you're browsing a website and have a query or need assistance. Instead of dialing a helpline or sending an email, you can engage in a real-time conversation with a live chat agent. These agents are trained professionals who provide customer support, answer questions, and guide users through their online experience. The best part? They do all this through a virtual workspace, making it a convenient and flexible career option.

One of the primary benefits of working as a live chat agent is the ability to work from home. Say goodbye to long commutes, office politics, and rigid schedules. With a live chat job, you can create your own workspace within the confines of your home, enjoying a comfortable and personalized work environment. This not only saves you time and money but also allows for a better work-life balance.

Now, let's talk about the financial aspect. Live chat jobs offer a competitive hourly wage ranging from $37 to $40. This means that for every hour you spend assisting customers and providing support, you can earn a substantial income. Of course, the exact pay rate may vary depending on factors such as your experience, the company you work for, and the nature of the job itself. Nevertheless, live chat jobs generally provide a lucrative earning potential.

To excel in this field, certain skills and qualities are essential. First and foremost, excellent communication skills are a must. As a live chat agent, you will be interacting with customers solely through written messages, so being able to convey information clearly and effectively is crucial. Additionally, strong typing skills and grammar proficiency will aid in maintaining a professional and polished conversation.

Empathy and patience are also vital traits for a successful live chat agent. Customers may reach out with various issues and frustrations, and it is your responsibility to empathize with their concerns and provide the necessary support. Patience is key, as some customers may require more time or have difficulty articulating their problems. By remaining calm and composed, you can ensure a positive customer experience.

To become a live chat agent, you may wonder what qualifications or experience are necessary. While specific requirements may vary depending on the company, most positions require a high school diploma or equivalent. Some companies may prefer candidates with prior customer service experience, but it is not always mandatory. The most important factor is a willingness to learn and adapt to new technologies and systems.

To get started, you can search for live chat job openings on various job boards or company websites. Submit your application, highlighting your relevant skills and experience. If you are selected, you may undergo a training program to familiarize yourself with the company's products or services, as well as the software or platforms used for live chat. Once you have completed your training, you will be ready to embark on your virtual career as a live chat agent.

It is worth noting that live chat jobs offer flexibility not only in terms of location but also in terms of working hours. Many companies operate on a 24/7 basis, allowing you to choose shifts that best align with your lifestyle. Whether you prefer working during the day, evening, or even overnight, there are opportunities available to suit your needs.

In conclusion, live chat jobs provide an exciting and lucrative career path in today's virtual workspace. With the convenience of working from home and earning a competitive wage of $37 to $40 per hour, it is no wonder that this field has gained popularity. By honing your communication skills, practicing empathy, and being patient with customers, you can excel as a live chat agent. So, if you're looking for a flexible and rewarding career option, consider exploring the world of live chat jobs. Who knows, this could be the perfect fit for you!

Click Here For More Details

[rotting-in-your-arms]

Let's Plays Over the Years

Posted 23rd December 2023

I found myself thinking about how much the Let's Play format has changed over the years, and came to the conclusion that there are four main "eras" of the genre.

- The Forum Era - This era originated on Something Awful in circa 2006 credited to user "slowbeef", often using screenshots and text descriptions of the gameplay rather than recorded video or commentary. This format was very rudimentary and often, once a game was completed and discussions over, the thread would be archived and forgotten about, left to rot. The Let's Play Archive was founded in 2007 to archive these threads properly in an easily accessible manner, and later expanded to archiving the later YouTube Let's Plays.

- The Classic YouTube Era - slowbeef is also credited with spawning this circa 2007; traits common in this era include low quality video/audio, YouTube's 10 minute time limit, and little-to-no editing. Many of the games played in this era were classic Nintendo and PC games, things easily emulated and captured with free recording software.

Notable YouTubers include:

retsupurae [a duo consisting of Something Awful users slowbeef and Diabetus, with other users being featured occasionally]

Gaming Garbage [a duo consisting of the late Something Awful founder Lowtax and the disgraced Shmorky]

Chuggaaconroy, NintendoCapriSun, ProtonJon [the three forming TheRunawayGuys channel, but all having solo YT careers]

lucahjin

HCBailly

and many more.

- The Modern YouTube Era - Many would say Pewdiepie was the origin of this new era of Let's Plays on YouTube, introducing a webcam to see the player behind the gameplay (not always featured, but definitely the standard), as well as a deeper focus on PC games, especially titles from independent developers. Other YouTubers include Markiplier, jacksepticeye, CinnamonToastKen VenturianTale, ZackScottGames, Tobuscus' gameplay channel TobyGames, and several others.

An interesting difference with this era and those most popular in it is the focus on indie games, especially horror games. Like Pewdiepie playing Amnesia, or Markiplier playing SCP: Containment Breach, and of course most famously, Five Nights at Freddy's. Rarely do you see console titles, AAA games, or games from companies like Nintendo or Sega. This creates opportunities such as Markiplier's ongoing "3 Scary Games" series, with over 100 episodes and counting. In this series he features indie horror games to bring awareness to the titles and their developers, using his platform to support small creators. Other creators collaborate in this format, some of the most popular of which being Grand Theft Auto V and Gmod gameplay videos.

- The Livestreaming Era - This is a nebulous era, with the rise of Twitch (and YouTube introducing livestreaming features to compete with them), many have taken to playing games live on air. Rather than record with live commentary to be uploaded later, this era is exclusive to playing live with audience (chat) interaction and discussion. Many people who got their start in the modern YT era, and even some from the classic era, have migrated to streaming. One benefit of streaming over prerecording is the ability to generate more content; one can stream gameplay for a sum of hours, upload the VOD, and then edit it down into highlight videos (and in the current YouTube landscape, Shorts). Streaming also allows for multiple sources of income, being able to take Twitch subscriptions, donations, or even on-stream sponsorships, on top of YouTube's standard ad revenue (and sponsors there, too). Although, due to the nature of online content creation, this is always a gamble- making money is never guaranteed and many creators have a lot of luck (or networking) on their side when they finally make their break (of course, this applies to the prior two eras, but the prospect of making content creation a job is much more realistic today than it was back then).

I personally grew up with the "classic era", seeing a lot of the modern era too. I was kinda right in-between them, I watched a lot of NCS, RunawayGuys, ScykohPlays if anyone remembers him (though he was actually a few years later), and then Pewdiepie got big. I remember spending a lot of time watching Happy Wheels videos from Pewdiepie, TobyGames, a lot of Markiplier's SCP Containment Breach series and obviously his FNAF playthroughs (I actually rewatched his SCP series a few years back, it was fun). I really respect Mark for showing off indie devs' work on his channel, he's kind of been doing it since he started but he's put more focus on it. I also think it's really interesting that you rarely see him play anything triple-A, same with the other big channels of those years. It makes me wonder if he's ever played Resident Evil or Silent Hill or something, like old PSX or PS2 horror games.

Anyway, sorry for the sort of "stream of consciousness" blogpost. And the lack of site updates in the past couple months. Life hasn't been treating me very well lately. Maybe I'll write a blogpost about it someday. I just felt like writing about something that made me feel a little happy :D.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays too, almost forgot to say that.

[tinstol]

From the Omegle Website:

““Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” — Douglas Adams

Dear strangers,

From the moment I discovered the Internet at a young age, it has been a magical place to me. Growing up in a small town, relatively isolated from the larger world, it was a revelation how much more there was to discover – how many interesting people and ideas the world had to offer.

As a young teenager, I couldn’t just waltz onto a college campus and tell a student: “Let’s debate moral philosophy!” I couldn’t walk up to a professor and say: “Tell me something interesting about microeconomics!” But online, I was able to meet those people, and have those conversations. I was also an avid Wikipedia editor; I contributed to open source software projects; and I often helped answer computer programming questions posed by people many years older than me.

In short, the Internet opened the door to a much larger, more diverse, and more vibrant world than I would have otherwise been able to experience; and enabled me to be an active participant in, and contributor to, that world. All of this helped me to learn, and to grow into a more well-rounded person.

Moreover, as a survivor of childhood rape, I was acutely aware that any time I interacted with someone in the physical world, I was risking my physical body. The Internet gave me a refuge from that fear. I was under no illusion that only good people used the Internet; but I knew that, if I said “no” to someone online, they couldn’t physically reach through the screen and hold a weapon to my head, or worse. I saw the miles of copper wires and fiber-optic cables between me and other people as a kind of shield – one that empowered me to be less isolated than my trauma and fear would have otherwise allowed.

I launched Omegle when I was 18 years old, and still living with my parents. It was meant to build on the things I loved about the Internet, while introducing a form of social spontaneity that I felt didn’t exist elsewhere. If the Internet is a manifestation of the “global village”, Omegle was meant to be a way of strolling down a street in that village, striking up conversations with the people you ran into along the way.

The premise was rather straightforward: when you used Omegle, it would randomly place you in a chat with someone else. These chats could be as long or as short as you chose. If you didn’t want to talk to a particular person, for whatever reason, you could simply end the chat and – if desired – move onto another chat with someone else. It was the idea of “meeting new people” distilled down to almost its platonic ideal.

Building on what I saw as the intrinsic safety benefits of the Internet, users were anonymous to each other by default. This made chats more self-contained, and made it less likely that a malicious person would be able to track someone else down off-site after their chat ended.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I launched Omegle. Would anyone even care about some Web site that an 18 year old kid made in his bedroom in his parents’ house in Vermont, with no marketing budget? But it became popular almost instantly after launch, and grew organically from there, reaching millions of daily users. I believe this had something to do with meeting new people being a basic human need, and with Omegle being among the best ways to fulfill that need. As the saying goes: “If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.”

Over the years, people have used Omegle to explore foreign cultures; to get advice about their lives from impartial third parties; and to help alleviate feelings of loneliness and isolation. I’ve even heard stories of soulmates meeting on Omegle, and getting married. Those are only some of the highlights.

Unfortunately, there are also lowlights. Virtually every tool can be used for good or for evil, and that is especially true of communication tools, due to their innate flexibility. The telephone can be used to wish your grandmother “happy birthday”, but it can also be used to call in a bomb threat. There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes.

I believe in a responsibility to be a “good Samaritan”, and to implement reasonable measures to fight crime and other misuse. That is exactly what Omegle did. In addition to the basic safety feature of anonymity, there was a great deal of moderation behind the scenes, including state-of-the-art AI operating in concert with a wonderful team of human moderators. Omegle punched above its weight in content moderation, and I’m proud of what we accomplished.

Omegle’s moderation even had a positive impact beyond the site. Omegle worked with law enforcement agencies, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to help put evildoers in prison where they belong. There are “people” rotting behind bars right now thanks in part to evidence that Omegle proactively collected against them, and tipped the authorities off to.

All that said, the fight against crime isn’t one that can ever truly be won. It’s a never-ending battle that must be fought and re-fought every day; and even if you do the very best job it is possible for you to do, you may make a sizable dent, but you won’t “win” in any absolute sense of that word. That’s heartbreaking, but it’s also a basic lesson of criminology, and one that I think the vast majority of people understand on some level. Even superheroes, the fictional characters that our culture imbues with special powers as a form of wish fulfillment in the fight against crime, don’t succeed at eliminating crime altogether.

In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery. Maybe that has something to do with the pandemic, or with political disagreements. Whatever the reason, people have become faster to attack, and slower to recognize each other’s shared humanity. One aspect of this has been a constant barrage of attacks on communication services, Omegle included, based on the behavior of a malicious subset of users.

To an extent, it is reasonable to question the policies and practices of any place where crime has occurred. I have always welcomed constructive feedback; and indeed, Omegle implemented a number of improvements based on such feedback over the years. However, the recent attacks have felt anything but constructive. The only way to please these people is to stop offering the service. Sometimes they say so, explicitly and avowedly; other times, it can be inferred from their act of setting standards that are not humanly achievable. Either way, the net result is the same.

Omegle is the direct target of these attacks, but their ultimate victim is you: all of you out there who have used, or would have used, Omegle to improve your lives, and the lives of others. When they say Omegle shouldn’t exist, they are really saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to use it; that you shouldn’t be allowed to meet random new people online. That idea is anathema to the ideals I cherish – specifically, to the bedrock principle of a free society that, when restrictions are imposed to prevent crime, the burden of those restrictions must not be targeted at innocent victims or potential victims of crime.

Consider the idea that society ought to force women to dress modestly in order to prevent rape. One counter-argument is that rapists don’t really target women based on their clothing; but a more powerful counter-argument is that, irrespective of what rapists do, women’s rights should remain intact. If society robs women of their rights to bodily autonomy and self-expression based on the actions of rapists – even if it does so with the best intentions in the world – then society is practically doing the work of rapists for them.

Fear can be a valuable tool, guiding us away from danger. However, fear can also be a mental cage that keeps us from all of the things that make life worth living. Individuals and families must be allowed to strike the right balance for themselves, based on their own unique circumstances and needs. A world of mandatory fear is a world ruled by fear – a dark place indeed.

I’ve done my best to weather the attacks, with the interests of Omegle’s users – and the broader principle – in mind. If something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden, what’s next? That is far and away removed from anything that could be considered a reasonable compromise of the principle I outlined. Analogies are a limited tool, but a physical-world analogy might be shutting down Central Park because crime occurs there – or perhaps more provocatively, destroying the universe because it contains evil. A healthy, free society cannot endure when we are collectively afraid of each other to this extent.

Unfortunately, what is right doesn’t always prevail. As much as I wish circumstances were different, the stress and expense of this fight – coupled with the existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse – are simply too much. Operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically. Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s.

The battle for Omegle has been lost, but the war against the Internet rages on. Virtually every online communication service has been subject to the same kinds of attack as Omegle; and while some of them are much larger companies with much greater resources, they all have their breaking point somewhere. I worry that, unless the tide turns soon, the Internet I fell in love with may cease to exist, and in its place, we will have something closer to a souped-up version of TV – focused largely on passive consumption, with much less opportunity for active participation and genuine human connection. If that sounds like a bad idea to you, please consider donating to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that fights for your rights online.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who used Omegle for positive purposes, and to everyone who contributed to the site’s success in any way. I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep fighting for you.

Sincerely,

Leif K-Brooks

Founder, Omegle.com LLC”

[etceterabd]

THE 6 FREE MARKETING TOOLS EVERY MARKETER NEEDS TO USE

Are you aware of the top marketing tools out there that not only help you get your job done better, but are completely FREE? There are a number of excellent free marketing tools, and we’ve compiled some of the top in the categories that help you master your marketing. Whether you add all or a few to your marketing toolbox, you’ll reap the benefits of these resources right away and work smarter, not harder.

Project Management: Trello

Lead Generation: Hubspot

Design: Canva

Content: Answer the Public

SEO: Google Free Business Profile and Google Analytics

Social Media Management: Buffer

PROJECT MANAGEMENT: TRELLO

This highly visual organization tool is a master at project management. It lays everything out intuitively on “boards” reminiscent of an old-school desk blotter and designed to manage projects, workflows, and tasks, from the big picture down to the finest detail. With the free version of Trello, you can create unlimited boards that contain a project or process, lists encompassing all tasks and divided into “To Do,” “Doing,” and “Done” (or your own custom process), and smaller, movable “cards” with the information you need to accomplish these tasks, tied to deadlines and assigned doers. 

Trello helps you boost your productivity. It keeps everyone moving, with spaces to comment on the cards, and add files and checklists. It also integrates with Slack, Dropbox, Outlook, Gmail, Salesforce, and more, with “power-ups,” or plug-ins, that expand your capabilities. The free version gets you unlimited cards, built-in automation, due dates, mobile and desktop apps, unlimited activity logs, templates, and unlimited power-ups. Then if you find you’re needing more, it’s a reasonable jump in monthly rate for more robust options.

LEAD GENERATION: HUBSPOT

Hubspot is known for many things to many marketers. It’s a robust CRM platform with highly effective marketing, sales, and service tools. The software is king at lead generation. It helps marketers attract potential visitors and leads through inbound marketing, ushering them through the buyer’s journey, and converting them into customers. 

While HubSpot’s capabilities are wide-ranging and complex, you can take advantage of its CRM tools in a free suite that includes email marketing, live chat, forms, pop-ups, ads, landing pages, reports, and more. This version has some very helpful features; marketers can add more information about incoming leads with data gleaned from the internet, populating charts with social profiles, job titles, where they came from online, and what they viewed before they filled out their form. You’ll be able to track these potential customers when they return to your site as well, and since each action is mapped, you can track timing too. The free version of HubSpot also provides analytics so you know which of your pages, offers, and traffic sources are pulling the highest conversions. You’ll see the number of visits before customers buy and identify other trends in site navigation so you can optimize your site. 

Hubspot also offers paid subscriptions, but these free capabilities are highly effective, so you can always add on later if you’d like:

DESIGN: CANVA

In the way that self-publishing content through social media has revolutionized the media industry, Canva has similarly given people a free platform with which to create beautiful brochures, business cards, banners, infographics, cards, logos, designs for promotional items, social media images, posters, newsletters, videos and so much more. Started in 2013, the platform offers many tools for free, including 250,000+ templates, 100+ design types (social media posts, presentations, letters, and more), free photos and graphics, additional team members, and 5GB of cloud storage, plus access to easy tutorials and other great resources, including a robust blog for marketing, design, and branding. You can level up to Pro and Enterprise for more features, which are free for classrooms and nonprofits.

Canva offers excellent tools for laying out and designing professional-looking  pieces even if you’re not a professional designer. With this design tool, you can create postcards for your upcoming sale, Instagram images for branding, or a flyer with your services. Its intuitive interface has made good design more accessible for all of us.

CONTENT: ANSWER THE PUBLIC

This content-generating tool is so simple that you’ll want to play with it for hours. It makes a great party game too, especially since it’s powered by a perky robot. The premise is simple: just enter the topic you’re interested in covering for your content strategy, and it will (within seconds), deliver an elegantly charted image containing more search terms than you can possibly use. The way it works is by collecting the autocomplete data from the 3 billion+ daily Google searches and mapping them out into “what,” “how,” “where,” and more.

You get an unfiltered look into the minds of searchers, to learn the information that they’re really seeking—and sometimes it’s surprising. You can leverage this content to create the next headlines and search terms for your blogs and social media posts. If your audience feels like you’re reading their minds, it’s because you pretty much are.

With Answer the Public’s free version, you can conduct more than 500,000 searches a month; if you need more you can also upgrade to their other plans:

SEO: GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE AND GOOGLE ANALYTICS

THE GOOGLE FREE BUSINESS PROFILE

The Google Free Business Profile is a no-brainer. If you have not yet completed this one-time task, head there right now and get your business set up. This tool will direct all users who find you on Google to the critical information they seek: your phone number, website, address, hours, ratings, description, posts, health and safety measures, women-owned/Black-owned/veteran-owned and other status, and more. It includes a map so users can see your location at a glance and a spot for product and services photos. You can create offers, respond to reviews, send and receive direct messages, and post FAQ answers. Since people will be looking for you on their phones and other devices, this first impression is crucial—and it’s 100% free.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

To track how well your website is performing, Google Analytics is an excellent tool. It measures real-time traffic and lets you set custom goals like purchases or signups. You can delve into revenue, return on investment (ROI) and return on ad spend (ROAS). When you link it to Google Ads, you can track ad performance and use their advanced machine learning capabilities to optimize advertising campaigns, based on cost per acquisition (CPA), ROI, or ROAS. With this information, you’ll learn which channels are performing best, see where your customers are coming from (devices and geographically), and use this information to optimize your site. Not bad for a free tool! 

Related: 6 Metrics Your Boss Actually Cares About

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT: BUFFER

Who has the time to continually post on social media? You do, now that you have a free tool that does it for you! With Buffer, you can schedule your social media posts across social sites in advance, so they’re set. 

Their free option gives you up to three channels and their profiles, with ten social posts per queue (and no monthly or yearly limit), basic publishing tools, and a landing page builder for you to send leads to. They even shorten links automatically to save you characters. Buffer is a great way to manage the posts you’ve been meaning to post but haven’t gotten around to yet. It’s your social media assistant, automated.

If you like working with Buffer (and you will), you can opt for their next available plan, which lets you look at analytics, use their engagement tools, build a shopping landing page, and integrate with other apps:

These free marketing tools are all so helpful, and their paid versions often include even more helpful capabilities. We recommend trying them for free and if you find they’re really working for you, they may be worth an additional investment since they’re providing a strong return. Check them out and let us know how you do!

And if you need help integrating any of these tools or would like more marketing muscle in your toolbox, reach out to our team. We’re suckers for time-saving tools, and we love to help make marketing easier, smarter, and of course, better.

[foxymoxynoona]

Alex is so oblivious, it’s like looking in the mirror 😂

Fun fact: that’s how my husband and I got together! I was a bartender, and he would always show up during my shifts and stayed at his claimed spot right in the middle chatting with me until I clocked out, obscenely tipped me and would walk me out to my car to make sure I was safe. I genuinely thought he did this to everyone else on the nights I wasn’t in for months and months, until a coworker told me he didn’t 😂 I finally confronted him one night and he admitted to me that he’d had nurtured feelings for me for quite some time, but wasn’t sure how to proceed because he didn’t want to make me uncomfortable by asking me out, because he always tipped me generously (he’s a software engineer) and he didn’t want to take that extra income away from me because I’d let slip to him once that I was financially struggling, so he decided he should be happy that he at least got to spend time with me at the bar a few nights a week 🥹 I kissed the crap out of him that night as soon as I got off work and you know the rest 😂

Now we have 2 kids together and I couldn’t have asked for a better husband! Helped me find a full-time job as a secretary that pays really well with great benefits because he knew I didn’t want to be a stay-at-home mom, and he takes care of the house and the kids because he works from home! I never have to worry about the house being in a disaster, and the kids adore him so much because he is such a good dad 🥹 he is so supportive of my love for BTS and BTS fics and has never once belittled me for it or complained about how much money I spend on albums and merch, he even helped me get tickets for their PTD LA and Vegas shows and took all of us as a family outing 🥹

I love him so much and I’ll never stop thanking my lucky stars that night he first walked in with his friends and decided to park their asses at the bar. Although my oblivious ass would probably have continued to torture the poor guy for far longer if it hadn’t been for my coworker 😂

This is sooooooo cute. I'm so happy for you that you have such a beautiful love story! It's truly precious and deserved! I love that he was so conflicted, not wanting to make you uncomfortable. What a warm fuzzy way to start my day, thank you for sharing this!

What's with all you folks having such good fic fodder stories? You're all a treasure trove of experiences, and I'm so glad when people can recognize the magic in their own lives (um, for good stories and the humor/bittesrweetness of sad ones lol)

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[oshacompliantmagicalgirl]

"Dear strangers,

From the moment I discovered the Internet at a young age, it has been a magical place to me. Growing up in a small town, relatively isolated from the larger world, it was a revelation how much more there was to discover – how many interesting people and ideas the world had to offer.

As a young teenager, I couldn’t just waltz onto a college campus and tell a student: “Let’s debate moral philosophy!” I couldn’t walk up to a professor and say: “Tell me something interesting about microeconomics!” But online, I was able to meet those people, and have those conversations. I was also an avid Wikipedia editor; I contributed to open source software projects; and I often helped answer computer programming questions posed by people many years older than me.

In short, the Internet opened the door to a much larger, more diverse, and more vibrant world than I would have otherwise been able to experience; and enabled me to be an active participant in, and contributor to, that world. All of this helped me to learn, and to grow into a more well-rounded person.

Moreover, as a survivor of childhood rape, I was acutely aware that any time I interacted with someone in the physical world, I was risking my physical body. The Internet gave me a refuge from that fear. I was under no illusion that only good people used the Internet; but I knew that, if I said “no” to someone online, they couldn’t physically reach through the screen and hold a weapon to my head, or worse. I saw the miles of copper wires and fiber-optic cables between me and other people as a kind of shield – one that empowered me to be less isolated than my trauma and fear would have otherwise allowed.

I launched Omegle when I was 18 years old, and still living with my parents. It was meant to build on the things I loved about the Internet, while introducing a form of social spontaneity that I felt didn’t exist elsewhere. If the Internet is a manifestation of the “global village”, Omegle was meant to be a way of strolling down a street in that village, striking up conversations with the people you ran into along the way.

The premise was rather straightforward: when you used Omegle, it would randomly place you in a chat with someone else. These chats could be as long or as short as you chose. If you didn’t want to talk to a particular person, for whatever reason, you could simply end the chat and – if desired – move onto another chat with someone else. It was the idea of “meeting new people” distilled down to almost its platonic ideal.

Building on what I saw as the intrinsic safety benefits of the Internet, users were anonymous to each other by default. This made chats more self-contained, and made it less likely that a malicious person would be able to track someone else down off-site after their chat ended.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I launched Omegle. Would anyone even care about some Web site that an 18 year old kid made in his bedroom in his parents’ house in Vermont, with no marketing budget? But it became popular almost instantly after launch, and grew organically from there, reaching millions of daily users. I believe this had something to do with meeting new people being a basic human need, and with Omegle being among the best ways to fulfill that need. As the saying goes: “If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.”

Over the years, people have used Omegle to explore foreign cultures; to get advice about their lives from impartial third parties; and to help alleviate feelings of loneliness and isolation. I’ve even heard stories of soulmates meeting on Omegle, and getting married. Those are only some of the highlights.

Unfortunately, there are also lowlights. Virtually every tool can be used for good or for evil, and that is especially true of communication tools, due to their innate flexibility. The telephone can be used to wish your grandmother “happy birthday”, but it can also be used to call in a bomb threat. There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes.

I believe in a responsibility to be a “good Samaritan”, and to implement reasonable measures to fight crime and other misuse. That is exactly what Omegle did. In addition to the basic safety feature of anonymity, there was a great deal of moderation behind the scenes, including state-of-the-art AI operating in concert with a wonderful team of human moderators. Omegle punched above its weight in content moderation, and I’m proud of what we accomplished.

Omegle’s moderation even had a positive impact beyond the site. Omegle worked with law enforcement agencies, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to help put evildoers in prison where they belong. There are “people” rotting behind bars right now thanks in part to evidence that Omegle proactively collected against them, and tipped the authorities off to.

All that said, the fight against crime isn’t one that can ever truly be won. It’s a never-ending battle that must be fought and re-fought every day; and even if you do the very best job it is possible for you to do, you may make a sizable dent, but you won’t “win” in any absolute sense of that word. That’s heartbreaking, but it’s also a basic lesson of criminology, and one that I think the vast majority of people understand on some level. Even superheroes, the fictional characters that our culture imbues with special powers as a form of wish fulfillment in the fight against crime, don’t succeed at eliminating crime altogether.

In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery. Maybe that has something to do with the pandemic, or with political disagreements. Whatever the reason, people have become faster to attack, and slower to recognize each other’s shared humanity. One aspect of this has been a constant barrage of attacks on communication services, Omegle included, based on the behavior of a malicious subset of users.

To an extent, it is reasonable to question the policies and practices of any place where crime has occurred. I have always welcomed constructive feedback; and indeed, Omegle implemented a number of improvements based on such feedback over the years. However, the recent attacks have felt anything but constructive. The only way to please these people is to stop offering the service. Sometimes they say so, explicitly and avowedly; other times, it can be inferred from their act of setting standards that are not humanly achievable. Either way, the net result is the same.

Omegle is the direct target of these attacks, but their ultimate victim is you: all of you out there who have used, or would have used, Omegle to improve your lives, and the lives of others. When they say Omegle shouldn’t exist, they are really saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to use it; that you shouldn’t be allowed to meet random new people online. That idea is anathema to the ideals I cherish – specifically, to the bedrock principle of a free society that, when restrictions are imposed to prevent crime, the burden of those restrictions must not be targeted at innocent victims or potential victims of crime.

Consider the idea that society ought to force women to dress modestly in order to prevent rape. One counter-argument is that rapists don’t really target women based on their clothing; but a more powerful counter-argument is that, irrespective of what rapists do, women’s rights should remain intact. If society robs women of their rights to bodily autonomy and self-expression based on the actions of rapists – even if it does so with the best intentions in the world – then society is practically doing the work of rapists for them.

Fear can be a valuable tool, guiding us away from danger. However, fear can also be a mental cage that keeps us from all of the things that make life worth living. Individuals and families must be allowed to strike the right balance for themselves, based on their own unique circumstances and needs. A world of mandatory fear is a world ruled by fear – a dark place indeed.

I’ve done my best to weather the attacks, with the interests of Omegle’s users – and the broader principle – in mind. If something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden, what’s next? That is far and away removed from anything that could be considered a reasonable compromise of the principle I outlined. Analogies are a limited tool, but a physical-world analogy might be shutting down Central Park because crime occurs there – or perhaps more provocatively, destroying the universe because it contains evil. A healthy, free society cannot endure when we are collectively afraid of each other to this extent.

Unfortunately, what is right doesn’t always prevail. As much as I wish circumstances were different, the stress and expense of this fight – coupled with the existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse – are simply too much. Operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically. Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s.

The battle for Omegle has been lost, but the war against the Internet rages on. Virtually every online communication service has been subject to the same kinds of attack as Omegle; and while some of them are much larger companies with much greater resources, they all have their breaking point somewhere. I worry that, unless the tide turns soon, the Internet I fell in love with may cease to exist, and in its place, we will have something closer to a souped-up version of TV – focused largely on passive consumption, with much less opportunity for active participation and genuine human connection. If that sounds like a bad idea to you, please consider donating to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that fights for your rights online.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who used Omegle for positive purposes, and to everyone who contributed to the site’s success in any way. I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep fighting for you.

Sincerely,

Leif K-Brooks

Founder, Omegle.com LLC"

[public-win]

Maximize Your Gameplay with Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Bot Lobbies

For any Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 enthusiast, reaching higher ranks, completing challenging camo objectives, and leveling up fast can be a big commitment. With LepreStore’s BO6 Bot Lobbies, you can speed up your progress, ensuring you make the most of every session without hours of grinding. This service sets you up in bot-filled lobbies, where opponents are idle, allowing you to focus on racking up kills without competition.

Why Choose BO6 Bot Lobbies for Call of Duty Black Ops 6?

Bot lobbies provide an unbeatable advantage: filling multiplayer sessions with non-competing players, letting you reach hundreds of kills in a short time. With LepreStore’s Bot Lobby service, you can clear camo challenges, level up your account, and progress faster than ever. On average, players can achieve between 250 to 350 kills in a single 20-minute match in a regular bot lobby. However, for those seeking even higher performance, the Premium Lobby option can yield up to 450 kills per session.

LepreStore’s Regular vs. Premium Lobbies

LepreStore offers two types of bot lobbies for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6—Regular and Premium. In the Regular Lobby, bots remain idle or wander through the map, allowing steady kill accumulation. The Premium Lobby, however, is tailored for efficient gameplay, as the bots actively run towards you, enabling quicker kill farming. If you’re serious about leveling up in the shortest possible time, the Premium option is ideal.

Key Benefits of LepreStore’s BO6 Bot Lobby Service

Using LepreStore’s bot lobby services brings numerous benefits. In each match, you can achieve between 200 and 450 kills, depending on your lobby choice, all within HC Domination mode. This kill count boosts your K/D ratio while also providing valuable weapon XP, camo progress, and Battle Pass points. The service also includes Express and Priority options for even faster delivery, so you get into your match sooner.

Are Call of Duty Black Ops 6 Bot Lobbies Safe?

Safety is a priority for LepreStore, and they ensure that their bot lobbies run on regular matchmaking servers without the need for third-party software. Every match is managed by a team of experienced professionals, so your account remains secure, while gameplay looks and feels like a typical match. This ensures you can enjoy risk-free benefits, leveling up without worry.

How to Get Started with LepreStore’s BO6 Bot Lobby Service

The process is simple and designed to be user-friendly. To start, just choose your gaming platform (whether Xbox, PS4/5, or PC) and select the number of matches you want. After choosing any additional options, proceed to checkout. Once your order is confirmed, LepreStore will reach out to you via Discord, live chat, or email for any clarifications, ensuring your experience is seamless from start to finish. In just a few steps, you’ll be set up in a bot lobby that makes leveling up and achieving camo challenges faster and more effective.

Why LepreStore is the Best Choice for Call of Duty BO6 Bot Lobbies

LepreStore stands out for its commitment to providing secure, efficient bot lobby services. For gamers who want to maximize their Call of Duty experience without the hours of grinding, LepreStore’s BO6 Bot Lobby service is the ultimate solution. Whether it’s for completing camo challenges, leveling up weapons, or boosting your stats, LepreStore offers the fastest, safest, and most efficient service in the market.

[helloaceone]

Top Benefits of Digital Marketing for Growing Your Business

In today’s digital age, businesses are constantly seeking effective ways to reach new customers, engage their audience, and drive sales. Traditional marketing methods like print advertising and direct mail can still be effective, but digital marketing offers unique advantages that make it indispensable for business growth. Whether you’re a startup or an established company, a strong digital marketing strategy can be a game-changer. Here are the top benefits of digital marketing and why it’s essential for business growth.

1. Wider Reach and Accessibility

Digital marketing removes geographical barriers, allowing businesses to reach audiences beyond their local markets. With billions of people online every day, companies can connect with customers globally. Channels like social media, search engines, and email make it easy to reach a large audience without the limitations of physical boundaries.

2. Cost-Effectiveness

Compared to traditional advertising (think TV, radio, and print), digital marketing is much more affordable and often provides a better return on investment. With options like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, you can set a budget that aligns with your financial goals and only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

3. Targeted Advertising and Personalization

Digital marketing allows for precise targeting based on demographics, interests, online behaviors, and more. By analyzing data, you can create highly customized campaigns that speak directly to your ideal audience, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

4. Improved Customer Engagement

Digital marketing makes it easier to interact with customers in real-time. Through social media channels, live chats, and email, businesses can communicate directly with their audience, answering questions, providing support, and building relationships. This two-way communication strengthens customer loyalty and enhances the overall customer experience.

5. Measurable Results and Data-Driven Insights

One of the biggest advantages of digital marketing is the ability to track and measure results. Unlike traditional marketing, which can be hard to quantify, digital marketing provides detailed insights into how campaigns perform. Platforms like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and email marketing software allow businesses to see what’s working and what isn’t, helping them refine their strategies for optimal performance.

6. Higher Conversion Rates

With targeted messaging and accessible data, digital marketing makes it easier to guide potential customers through the buying journey. Optimized landing pages, personalized email campaigns, and compelling calls to action all contribute to higher conversion rates. Digital marketing also enables retargeting, where ads are served to users who have previously visited your website or interacted with your content, keeping your brand top of mind.

7. Enhanced Brand Reputation and Authority

A well-executed digital marketing strategy not only boosts visibility but also positions your brand as an authority in your industry. By creating valuable content, sharing expertise, and engaging with your audience, you build trust and credibility. Over time, a strong online presence helps your business gain a positive reputation and establishes it as a go-to source in your field.

8. Flexibility and Scalability

Digital marketing is highly adaptable. Campaigns can be launched, paused, or adjusted based on performance, allowing businesses to remain agile. As a business grows, its digital marketing efforts can easily scale. Whether you’re expanding into new markets, launching new products, or targeting different customer segments, digital marketing provides the flexibility to grow alongside your business.

Conclusion

Digital marketing is more than just a trend; it’s a vital part of business success in today’s competitive landscape, and at AceOne Technologies, we recognize its transformative power. With our expertise, we help businesses expand their reach, optimize costs, create targeted advertising, and gain actionable insights in real-time. Our digital marketing strategies empower companies to not only connect with their audiences effectively but also to drive meaningful conversions and achieve sustainable growth. For businesses aiming to excel in a digital-first world, AceOne Technologies is here to ensure your digital marketing investment yields lasting impact and competitive advantage.

[techflye4]

Embracing the Future: How AI is Transforming Churches

Artificial intelligence is changing the way you live, work and even worship. No doubt technology has always played a very important role in modernizing church operations. The rise of AI brings new opportunities for churches to connect with the configurations, improve administration and improve worship experiences. In this guide you learn everything about AI church.

What do you need to know about AI in church?

Just like AI sermon AI or artificial intelligence refers to the use of machines or computer programs to stimulate human intelligence. In the context of church AI can be used for a huge range of tasks from managing administrative duties to improving communication with the People. Whether through chat boots or church management software the tools can help you run more effectively and reach people in a new innovative way.

The benefits of AI in churches

One of the best parts about AI is the ability to improve communication between the church leaders and the members. For example, AI chat bots can be installed on the church website on mobile apps to answer queries, provide service times or give details about upcoming event. The chat bots are available 24/7 allowing you to get instant response even outside the church hours. Additionally, AI can help you send automated messages all reminders to church members about prayer meetings or special events. This ensure that everybody stays informed and engaged with the church community.

Running a church also includes a lot of administrative look from managing finances to scheduling events and handling donations. AI can help you automate many of the tasks making it really easy for you to focus on more meaningful responsibilities.

AI tools can help you engage with the congregation in more customized way. AI driven platforms can track our interaction with the church like attendance at services participation in bible studies or even contributions to volunteer efforts. With this data you can better understand the needs of your members and offer targeted resources.

 So above all you need to know that AI has the potential to change the way churches operate and connect with the members. From improving communication and streamlining administrative tasks to improving worship experiences AI can help you serve your communities more effectively. By carefully considering how to integrate AI into the ministry churches can also improve the future technology while staying true to the spiritual mission.

For more details visit our website https://www.aichurchassistant.com/ 

[fiersza]

I've only recently realized that I've adopted the "not talking about my achievements or unique things about me" to some degree.

There's a bunch of reasons for this--I've spent the last decade in a multicultural tourist hotspot where almost everybody has done some really cool shit or is currently doing some really cool shit, and sooner or later, it'll come out organically, and then you get to talk about it deeper than just a "Wow, good job! Good on you!"

Outside of other people who've chosen to live where I live, my life can seem kinda extraordinary, and it gets weird having the same conversations over and over again where people are amazed and it's just your normal everyday life now.

Instead of telling people I'm a novelist and survive and thrive 100% off my book earnings, I just say I'm a writer, and let them assume blog posts, etc. If pushed to specify, I often say "something like that," a lot of the time.

I live in Costa Rica on the beach. Now some people are going to be like, "oh nice, it's lovely there," which is a great response. But sometimes I get the "OH YOU ARE SO LUCKY THAT'S AMAZING," and that feels weird too. It's my life. It's a choice I happened into, worked to keep, and it's my normal.

My kid is an anchor baby--a dual citizen here who gave me legal residency to stay. The only place this seems like a bad thing is if you're not-white and in the USA, at which you're trying to take advantage of the system. (Yeah, the system sucks. That's why it has to be taken advantage of. I actually do bring this one up to folks from the US to push their understanding of immigration.)

But I will happily tell friends and family the moment I finish a new book. If I have a really good income month or something else rad happened.

I'll tell them about my achievement moments in Spanish, like the day I went on a four hour hike and ended up chatting with someone in Spanish for the whole day. The first time someone I knew spoke English and Spanish didn't immediately switch to English when I started talking.

Connected to this idea of how we speak about our achievements is how we speak about identity.

One of the things I've consciously attempted to train myself out of is asking people what they do for work. Because that's how we identify ourselves in the US--what we do for work. I say I'm a novelist. I was a software programmer. I don't say I write books. I wrote computer programs. We don't describe our jobs as what we do but what it makes us.

And the rest of the world isn't like that, and even 10 years out I still can't fully wrap my head around that and detangle the knot of capitalistic identity wrapped around my soul.

"What do you like to do with your time?" and other probably better phrased questions still feel so awkward and out of place in my mouth, when "What do you do for work?" is so comfortable and familiar.

Because the reality is most people from the US spend the majority of their time at work. We don't have space to do or be much else unless we work extremely hard to reject cultural expectations. Not to mention how meeting the bare level of survival keeps most people pinned down in work with little escape.

Coming back to the original topic of how we share achievements, I think they're definitely tied together. On the one hand, we in the US have a big cultural identity problem in that there's a more or less unspoken belief that what we achieve defines who we are. On the other hand, we're generally more than happy to take any excuse to celebrate and hype up others, and hope they do the same for us.

It's not a better way or a worse way, as many other reblogs have noted--its just A way, with its own benefits and costs.

This is the first time someone's pointed something out about the way we behave I didn't even realise and found myself realising they are entirely right