Review
TalkwithStranger is a service that provides free random chat with complete strangers, in one-on-one private chat rooms. No registration is required, and you can also send pictures as well as video content. This is a wonderfully bizarre and surreal website that allows you to talk to strangers from all over the world.
The TalkwithStranger Brand
TalkwithStranger markets itself towards ‘men, women, teens, adults, boys & girls’ with their free private online chat room service. That is a fairly all-encompassing and complicated way of saying – this site is for everyone. You can talk and chat with strangers in the USA to the UK, Asia, Australia and everywhere else in-between.
The service prides itself on being completely free and the brand presents a rather interesting tone via frequent use of provocative language. For example:
“Do you like to meet sexy people in online chat rooms? Our aim is to make your chatting experience sexy by using our random text chat, as pleasant, fun and successful as possible.”
This is a very strange and almost worrying message for the brand to portray, when it is also marketing itself towards boys and girls.
Registration
Absolutely nothing is required to use this chat room. There is no sign up, log in or registration required – this is about as random as it gets! You can literally begin chatting with a random stranger, anonymously, with just one click.
You can of course choose a nickname before you begin – and there are no limitations on what this can be.
Desktop/Mobile Capability
TalkwithStranger works on iPhone, Android and all tablet devices. The website supports free mobile live chat, allowing you to chat to random strangers anywhere you want to! If that’s your kind of thing! The site’s free video calling features are available across all mobile platforms too.
User Experience
The entire site structure is unorganised and cluttered, with too many uncategorised options that lead to an interrupted journey flow. The advertisements don’t help, many of them containing big green buttons that say ‘Get Started’. They are there to fool you! It’s just a link to another source, it’s not the start button to get chatting!
The start button you need is really, really small and hard to recognise at first. Of course it is! The exasperation doesn’t stop there. The chat interface itself isn’t that intuitive either. Overall, for user experience alone, this doesn’t rate very highly amongst the rest of the chat services we have used so far.
Safety and Security
When you first click the ‘chat now’ button there is a message that says something along the lines on ‘you are accepting our Terms of Usage’. But aside from this, there is very little else in terms of user safety advice, security tips or customer support. The site seems to focus more on messages that help you flirt – rather than stay safe.
There are also several very worrying messages contained within the content of the site. The site says this is a place to meet ‘sexy’ strangers and teaches you how to flirt. But on the other hand, it is also reaching out to ‘young girls and boys’.
Of course, no physical harm should come from anyone using the gimmick that is TalkwithStranger – but we strongly advise that anyone under the age of 16 should avoid this website.
Customer Service
To give the site some credit, it does contain an FAQ page. Despite how impersonal this is, it does help with a few common queries. There is also a contact form, which is basic and everything you would expect from a contact form online.
Conclusion
We’ve mentioned this term a few times throughout this review already – but TalkwithStranger is very much a gimmick and just a random bit of fun. This may seem as though we are degrading it but that is not the truth, we are merely advising you on how best to approach this website.
On the face of it, there is very little chance you are going to build a meaningful relationship or connection with a total stranger online. As long as you remember this, do not get involved any further than that, you may have lots of fun with this site! It is actually quite cool and somewhat romantically pleasant to talk with a stranger innocently!
The charm of the site could be improved by dropping at least 50% of the advertisements and tidying up the aesthetics a bit. This way, they could at least improve user experience and the draw of the gimmick. For all of these reasons – unfortunately TalkwithStranger is a low scorer with a 3.5.
