Would You Try an Online Smile Exchange?

Some reports are comparing this new online smile exchange to Chatroulette, but that's kind of misleading.

If you're not familiar with Chatroulette, it's basically a website where you can be repeatedly molested by complete strangers via webcam, then occasionally chat with other stunned victims about the horrors you've just witnessed.

2uv.us is different.

The biggest and most noticeable difference is that there is very little unsolicited nudity involved. In fact, there should be none whatsoever if the system works like it's supposed to.

Basically, the program is something of a social experiment that allows you to take a picture of yourself -- smiling, of course -- and in return sends you a picture of someone else who's doing the same thing.

In short, it gives users the opportunity to smile at a stranger.

There's not much information about it on the actual site, but if you so much as fake your smile, a "fancy machine" could detect it and deny the image. The folks over at Good.is tried it out with fake smiles, straight faces, and napkins with smiles drawn on them -- only the real ones got through.

Here's what it should look like if you're both photogenic.



Results may vary.

2uv.us also notes at the bottom of their site that "photo and location information will only be used to aid in the creation of this site," which means presumably there's more to come.

Sure beats Chatroulette!