By: Ally Millar

New chat portal Natter launched today, promising a simple and clean way for people to meet and make new friends from near and far via the world of Facebook.

The webcam-based introduction service is the brainchild of young entrepreneurs Tom Fide and Phil Harris whose experience in niche dating websites is backed by Neil Stanley, a former banker and dotcom innovator.

The service almost acts as a servant to Facebook and Skype: forging those initial introductions that allows peers and potentials to meet in a moderated and thus cleaner, safer way.

We spoke with the trio before today’s launch to determine if moderated, regulated and inexplicit webcam-based chat on Facebook is just what the dotcom ordered.

Neil Stanley: “I met these guys and they just seemed really exciting. To put it in context I’m 46 they’re 23. They’ve both got pretty successful online businesses that are never going to make them millions but will make them a good living; and I was impressed by them. They came to me with what seemed like a fabulous idea.”

Natter as a service is somewhat inspired by the young duo’s background in online dating sites but with a firmer grounding in social media. The dating element is deliberately downplayed.

Phil Harris: “I wouldn’t say this is so much a dating site. “We’d always been excited of meeting people at random via the webcam but we were disappointed by the sites doing a similar thing and it didn’t feel like you could meet real people. That’s really where the idea for Natter came from.

“I said we needed to create a site like this which had the same excitement of meeting real people that actually works instead of speaking to undesirables only interested in being rude.”

Two words which have been quickly indoctrinated and now enshrined into the dotcom consciousness – Chat Roulette – rear their head.

Chat Roulette is similarly a webcam-based chat service notorious for featuring little more than masturbating males, adverts and promotional videos. Its filth is so well known it is regularly lampooned in print, online and famously on South Park. Infamy indeed. So how is this not another unregulated nudity free-for-all?

Phil Harris: “What we have incorporated is the Facebook connect. Users have to have a Facebook account with a certain amount of friends to access Natter and once they’re within the Natter we’ve got a fairly robust moderation system in place which pretty much gives users the power – which is also what Natter’s all about.

Neil Stanley: “The really important point is that Chat Roulette – or any of the other ones – is that you are completely anonymous and can be as rude and display whatever parts of your body you like.

“On Natter you are initially – until you choose otherwise – anonymous to the person you meet except for your first name however you’re not anonymous to us at the website.

“So whilst you might, if you were completely anonymous, be interested in displaying your private parts I think most people – everybody – wouldn’t do that if there’s a possibility your friends might find out.”

The Natter process

Log in to your Facebook account (providing you have over a number amount of friends).

Decide whether you want to chat to girls, boys or either.

Choose if you want to chat to those in your country or worldwide.

Check “I’m over 18” box.

Click ‘Natter’ where you’re asked to fill in a few details and connect your Natter to your Facebook profile.

There was some office derision when the concept was floated. A company steeped in new-media digitalism, colleagues wondered why this service is any more appealing than those trusted stalwarts in the multi-billion grossing world of online-friendship.

Neil Stanley: “We know that there’s things like Skype and Facebook out there that are completely market leaders – we’re in no way trying to step on their toes we feel that this is a gap in the market to bring people who are on Facebook and Skype together and give them a way to meet each other.

“We don’t feel there’s any way for people to meet new friends so that’s the gap in the market.”

Phil Harris: “I think we can very easily co-exist. It comes back to what our USP is and that’s making new friends. Facebook is great for making friends with people you know and making friends with friends of friends. But if you genuinely want to meet someone completely new they don’t do it in our experience – so that’s the big difference.

Neil Stanley: “It is not a mechanism for speaking to your existing friends, there’s Skype for that and Skype’s a great service and we would say talk to your friends on that – this is specifically for making new friends. You will meet people you’ve never met before on Natter.”

Two questions and then comes the matching process where the software connects the user to the next suitable and available.

A quick countdown begins so the users know their chat’s about to start and a few steps are cast to the readers’ eye reminding them to be polite.

Each chat is required to last a minute chat before chatters are asked if they wish to continue. If so: a ten minute extended chat ensues, if not: no hard feelings and move on.

Neil Stanley: “There is a requirement we put on people to be polite for a minute with the person that they meet and that’s not very hard we don’t think.

“At the end of the minute and neither person want to continue then they’re on to the next Natter, if they do both click yes however, they go into an extended Natter and there are some different options there.”

In the extended chat, new friends can share their Facebook pages with each other. There is still no obligation to reveal your identity or your Facebook page. But the trio enforces that whilst the Over 18 checkbox is insurance from their end, the service is still the safest place you can go on the web with a webcam.

Phil Harris: “If you’re going online and actually meeting people at random over your webcam, face-to-face is something really exciting. I said months and months ago that I wish there was a site out there that allows you to meet real people – not just undesirables – so if this site works, or when this site works: I’ll really look forward to using it.

Tom Fide: “ Yeah, at the end of the day I’m a single guy looking to meet single girls and it’s quite exciting I’ve made a website that can actually let me do that – and do it properly and well.”

The three aren’t wishing to speculate on the future direction of Natter, with an open mind they are going to let the users in the initial six months of the live project determine the evolutionary route which Natter will take, and any necessary ad-ons or subtractions.

Neil Stanley: “We’re all believers in the open web, the idea of creating something that’s genuinely useful and letting the users dictate where it goes. We’ve got lots of ideas and directions we’d like to take it in but honestly we want people to tell us.

Tom Fide: “We just want to see where Natter goes, we’re just going to let users decide and see where it goes naturally. We’ve got ideas and it’s hard not to when you have something like this but the best way for it to grow and be popular and successful is to let the users do that.”

The three are happy to admit that they are also intrigued and curious about the future direction and potential for Natter. Describing themselves as “three guys who’ve raided our piggybanks and spent just about all of our savings to get where we are today”, the service is the culmination of thousands of man hours, every day for six months.

On face-value it’s hard to know what Natter will become. A good idea for meeting brand new people on the net – yes. A refreshing move away from the sleaziness of webcam-based chat – it seems so.

Whether the service will register with a generation of heavy online users is in their hands as much as this entreprenurial threesome. Natter’s stealthy security, anti-smut measures and open-minded consumer-led evolution suggests this gamble could be much more than a Chat-Roulette.