How to own a chatroom website / domain?

Hey guys, I'm just curious and want to know how I can own or maybe take over a video chat room that is currently running and owned by a company.

***You can skip this preamble if you like (just go down to the bottom)***:
Here's some background history: I've been an avid chatter since the days of Excite Virtual Places and then Yahoo Public Chat rooms. But as most "good" things in life, they close down or get shut down. Excite VP used to be free and then got owned by another company that turned it into a paying site. Yahoo Public Chatrooms was probably the biggest and longest running public chat room service and I used it for over 10 years. What was good about it was the fact they had hundreds of rooms with easily a million chatters that logged in each day from ALL OVER the world. Yes, there were spam bots and things like that, but if you just ignored it, it really wasn't a problem at all. I don't buy the excuse that they shut it down due to spam issues. To me, it just seems like a lot of these good public domains where one can chat anonymously, and speak freely, webcam, voice chat, share files, share images, play games together, etc (you could do everything there) are getting shut down left right and center (there are whole bunch of other sites that have shut down in the last few years) all claiming it was due to finances / not profitable. I find that hard to believe with the sheer size of people that still used yahoo public chat rooms. Sure, the popularity was waning in America as everyone started to move over to FB, Twitter, and Skype, but user base was still ENORMOUS globally.

I've tried to look around for other public chat sites that were similar to yahoo public chat rooms but none of them lived up to it. They either had such a small user base (20 chatters or less), only 1 or 2 rooms (no categories, no hobbies/interests), and those 20 ppl would often be buddies part of a clique who log in everyday and chat together for 8 hours a day anyways so you can't engage with them.

Also, if you look around, all the leftover chat rooms are back to old school technology. It's just a simple BOX with text of messages. There's no option to share files/images, post links or images, webcam, voice chat...they don't even have a display pic/profile...it's just a user name and text. I was shocked and frustrated to find that these were the only sites remaining with 21st century technology.

Now yes, I know about the new video chat sites like omegle, or chatroulette, or oovoo, and the usual FB, Twitter, Skype, Google +, but the problem with these sites is that you have to share your whole life online. Yes, you can make fake FB accounts, but making a FAKE account versus simply wanting to use an anonymous account are TOTALLY DIFFERENT. I don't want to make FAKE accounts to chat anonymously, I just want the option to log in and use any user name I want without having to have my whole life story, albums, friends list, what i did 2 minutes ago statuses and where I was last night online just to chat.

All of these newer mediums are aiming to put your whole identity online in order for you to do something so simple that Yahoo Public Chat Rooms once offered for FREE without any commitment of tying your account to all your information and life postings.

So, I found a site called video chat rooms dot org...I won't post the link (not sure if that's allowed and I'm not advertising it), and I found that it was one of the best ones out there post-yahoo. It's still relatively small and I don't think it will ever grow to anything large, but what I like about it is it offers webcam chat, along with regular text chat, voice chat, posting/sharing files and images are also allowed (although they recently changed it so that only registered (free) users can post whereas before any guest could). They don't have a lot of online users at one time (generally 10 - 15 during slow hours and upwards to 50+ during peak hours), but I feel it is less restraining and limiting than most other chat rooms.

This made me think, is there way for me to either 1) replicate this sort of chat room style and applications and make my own chat room site or 2) buy this site off them and own/run it myself?

If any of the above is possible, I would want to do it because I wouldn't shut it down. I'm afraid any day now, that site will shut down too just like all the others did and I'll be left again to turn to either the FB/Skype/Twitter world or use the really out-dated, limiting chat rooms (that only allows for text chats).

Can anyone with expertise in this field check out the site (video chat rooms dot org (http://www.video-chat-rooms.org/) and tell me if something like that site can be replicated or if the template can be purchased? It doesn't seem like an overly advanced layout...it's rather simple, but it just provides all the options that makes one feel free as one should in a public room. I want to preserve that if possible by owning it or making my own?

Thanks.

 

Can you just post the condensed version, not the thesis for those of us, that do not want to try to decipher what you are attempting to get across.

 

TL;DR version- he wants to know how to create a chat room or buy an already existing one from someone.

 

If you actually read my post you'll see my question was asked in ONE SENTENCE which was the first sentence. After that I wrote a warning that said you could SKIP THE PREAMBLE. rolleyes

 

If you wanted to get that across, next time do not write a thesis.

 

The short version; in my day they were called BBS's. Now days they are called Google Hangouts. As for purchasing one from someone, unless the OP has a boatload of money, they are not going to just take away a website from someone that is already operating one, unless it is already up for sale. If the site is not active, the URL is available, they just need to find a PHP software package, that would allow them to run a site, such as how Majorgeeks forums are ran.

That would mean having to learn how to use a database package like MySql, knowing how to also use Apache, PHP, etc.. Not for the faint of heart.

 

No offense, but I outgrew chat rooms about the same time I dumped AOL dial-up in 1999.

If you decide to go forward, treat it like any other business venture: Be sure you'll be making enough subscription and/or ad revenue to cover the costs of buying and maintaining it.

 

Just wondering, but would not the PREamble come before the question?

 

I'm not actually sure if anyone here checked out the site I'm inquiring about.

It's not a particularly active or busy site at all. The intro page is very simple and the layout seems very retro. Not saying that it means it's easy to replicate though. Apparently they used to have 6 or 7 other active regional chat rooms but those are all closed and there are only 2 active now.

Are there any actual resources/links/books that teach one how to build/maintain a site that involves chatroom features?

I think one of the main challenges if figuring out to allow for all that bandwidth (the transmission of cams, files, images, etc). I'm wondering what domain or service this site uses to acquire the needed bandwidth for their service?

 

I just found an example like this site: https://chatstep.com

But this one is meant for secure/private group chat rooms. I like it's simplicity,
and the use of drag and drop images into the chat message.

I'm looking for something similar to this except I want it to be a public chat room.
It also looks like it was made by 3 people and not some sort of company.