Review
Strangermeetup is an anonymous chat service that connects you with people from all over the world. The brand prides itself on its community of people, making it one of the most popular random-chat generators online today. The service is available on desktop, tablet, iPhone and Android.
The StrangerMeetup Brand
The brand itself attempts to build a reputation based on success stories – which is a unique angle for this chat service to take. There are numerous stories like this example shown here, all of them describing positive interactions and resulting relationships from the use of this service. It is a shame that the brand hasn’t taken the opportunity to push this marketing technique even further by promoting on social media channels!
Registration
The first option you are given is to either login or chat with a stranger. Which may throw you at first, as surely you must have to do one before the other, right? Not in this case…
If you click chat with a stranger, you are instantly connected to a random person with no identity – there name is simply ‘stranger’. This is a very random, almost surreal and weird experience – and very hard to know where to start!
If you click log in it asks for an email and password – or if you want to sign up. So signing up is not immediately obvious until you attempt to log in. As you can tell, this site has its nuances!
To sign up you must provide a username, an email address and your choice of password. The captcha is a simple tick box and ‘save’ button. You are then sent a verification email to click a link to confirm your registration. Lastly, you are directed to your profile, where you can add a little info about yourself. Done!
Desktop/Mobile Capability
Luckily, StrangerMeetup is one of those chat sites that has branched out fully into the mobile market. You can download the StrangerMeetup app on both iOS and Android devices. So you can have a random conversation, with a total stranger in a completely spontaneous place!
User Experience
The advertisements are a little bit of an annoyance and the sign-up process could be better. But you can get past that due to the easy use of the site. Everything is simple and straight to the point here, which is what you want from a chat site. There aren’t many additional features as a result, but there is a blog for users to enjoy. This shares tips on how to catch the attention of the opposite member of sex and subject similar to this.
Overall, the site doesn’t throw up too many problems and is easy to navigate. No complaints really!
Safety and Security
There is nothing to download in order to use StrangerMeetup, and the site states it does not store any information permanently. There is a privacy policy should you be concerned, amongst many other bits of information made available before you begin chatting. The list of chat rules is reassuring at it shows there is some regulation here. We had no problems using the site so neither should you!
Customer Service
Customer service is severely lacking on StrangerMeetup, which does bring some doubts over the jurisdiction of their chat rules! If there is no one around to talk or complain to, how is anyone meant to enforce these laws? The only way to get in touch is to ‘provide feedback’ which is a very cold and impersonal way of allowing your members to contact you.
You can only email them from your own email account/browser too – there isn’t a contact form on site. This is unfortunate, as it lets the brand down right towards the end of our review!
Conclusion
The StrangerMeetup website is really easy to get to grips with and navigate, even for first time users. This is despite the clunky sign-up process and bombardment of advertisements. This does affect the user experience, but not by much. This is because overall, the site is very well built – running nice and smoothly at all times.
The concept of talking to complete strangers is both neat and scary at the same time, providing a slight thrill you wouldn’t otherwise get from a normal chat room. It does offer some conversational challenges but as long as you don’t take it so seriously, you should have a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, StrangerMeetup does let itself down with a lack of additional features/options, a questionable safety policy and a total lack of customer service. There isn’t much of a community vibe going on here. So you may have fun for a while, but not for days on end, if you catch our drift. All of this is why StrangerMeetup catches a cool 4.5!
