Chill.com | A Place To Chill And Watch Online Video
Chill.com, from the makers of Namesake, is a video community sharing platform. After you sign up for an account, super easy if you have a Facebook account, you are taken to a page with available lounges for you to view video. You can also create your own lounge. Each lounge has its own theme based on the videos being shown. Everything from hip hop music videos to entertainment news and gossip, there is sure to be a lounge to suit your taste. I had a chance to interview Brian Norgard, founder of Chill.com.
The first thing I noticed when I signed up was that it is very similar to turntable.fm but with videos. Were you inspired by that service or was this something that you came upon independently?
I was inspired by the combination of content, social networking and gaming. The browser is finally awakening after 17 some odd years of research and development. There’s no reason
why customers shouldn’t have immersive, rich and meaningful interaction in the browser. People should have better ways to meet and discover new people and content. As we like to say internally, everything is better with friends.
Right now, videos from YouTube and Vimeo are available. What other video services are you looking to add?
Last week, we created a custom lounge for TechCrunch Disrupt and saw firsthand how much fans loved the experience. The engagement was off the charts. Our key learning from the TechCrunch Disrupt Lounge was that our customers were just as interested in socializing with each other as they were in consuming content. Making content truly social through rich interaction added a dimension that even surprised the Chill team. To be honest, we didn’t get much work done during the conference because we were far too busy hanging our in the lounge. So…
We decided to build a product around this simple idea of making live streams into social experiences.
Today we’re launching Chill Live Streaming Lounges. Out of the gate, we support Ustream, Livestream, Twitch.tv, Justin.tv and YouTube Live. Support for more services is coming soon. Going forward, we’ll be releasing custom lounges with partners interested in creating a new layer of interaction around their content. If you’re a creator, conference organizer or someone that puts on live events drop us a line. We’d love to help your audience build more meaningful bonds.
What are your future plans for the site? Are you looking to add maybe TV shows or feature films?
We are going to continue to improve upon our core experience and of course look for new and exciting content that people want to watch. Exciting times.
Chill.com is an interesting take on community video viewing. It has the exciting shared experience similar to turntable.fm with the complete immersive experience of watching video. Sign up today at Chill.com and let us know in the comments which rooms are your favorite.
