I see potential in this. It's almost like walking into a room full of people all watching one TV. There's appeal to that; online video does have the watch-whatever-you-want feature, but a lot of times people just want to turn on a TV channel and watch whatever comes on.<p>If you really want to make this a startup, you should make it exactly that. Take control over the public rooms, feed them with quality content, and call them channels. Hire moderators to keep the content fresh. Show occasional commercial advertisements. I think the closer you make it to TV, the more willing people will be to sit through advertisements (random idea: sell to advertisers what people say during their advertisements). Voting is an ok feature, but you should limit that to private rooms.<p>I can see myself going to a "comedy central" channel and just watching whatever it has on, not needing worrying about what to watch next. Knowing that others are watching the same thing is pretty compelling.