About 3 weeks ago, I shared a very early version of Bored People Chat on Reddit. Back then, it was a basically a simple anonymous chat room with no signup. One public room, with random nicknames, where strangers could drop in and talk.

I was very naive, I thought building a site and launching would be most of the work. It turns out that running even a tiny anonymous chat is a more serious undertaking than I expected.

A lot has changed since the first post. The site is not just a chat room anymore, but it's chat + MMO connected together.

People started coming back, recognize each other and have a long conversations for hours.

A few things that I learned:

1. The internet is still a beautiful place. You can still meet really great strangers you can vibe with. People use anonymous chat for different reasons, but many of them just want a low pressure, casual place to talk.

2. Anonymous chat needs moderation much earlier than you think. I saw worst parts of the internet early on. Creeps, trolls, spammers, abusive users can damage a small community very quickly. I had to add stronger moderation, reporting, filtering, and some small friction for brand new users. I learned that people don't stay because there are lots of strangers, but the room feels like a safe place to talk.

3. Empty room problem. At first, people said hi, saw empty room, and left. It only started feeling more alive after a few people had genuinely good interaction and began returning regularly.

4. People are attached to their identities. I thought random nicknames would be disposable but I was wrong. A session bug made it obvious, because people were devastated and wanted their nicknames and progress back. That pushed me to add recovery codes.

5. MMO changed the whole product. Originally I thought it'd be a small side activity. Instead, it gives people something to do when the room is quiet, creates topics, and makes users more recognizable in the chat by being able to customize their avatars.

If you are bored or curious, feel free to drop in and say hi! (no signup required and no ads)