Located at www.aim.com/av, AV is a 3-step process to beginning the chat. Its simplicity may be the key to its success. And don’t worry if you’ve been scarred by Chatroulette, this isn’t an anonymous video chat. Individuals have to be invited to participate to find your chat.
Step 1 is to check the I’m at least 13 years old box if you are and hit the Start a video chat.
If your microphone and camera are detected just fine, you’ll be onto step 2 which gives you the chat invite link to send to your friends with easy links to do so with AIM or Facebook.
Step 3 is to just chat it up once your friends start showing up.
If you don’t have a camera or microphone plugged into the computer and detected by AV, you’ll actually get this as a step 2. You can either plug in your devices and try again or skip it and just use text chat.
I could definitely see using this over Skype for some one-on-one virtual meetings as long as fewer than 4 people were involved in the conversation. I’ll have to keep this in mind should the need arise.