It’s about time we mentioned ChatRoulette.com.

Why? Well, it seems that the site has tapped into something within the human psyche, which apparently makes it rather addictive. The recent media attention the site has received has, according to Comscore, increased its traffic ninefold in February to a smidgin under a million visitors. We expect March will multiply that several times over.

What is it? Imagine you go to a website, press ‘Play’ and a random person pops up on the screen. You’re seeing and potentially hearing them, live on their webcam, and they can see/hear you on yours. You can also text chat, if that’s easier. If you don’t like the look of that person, you click ‘Next’ and up pops someone else instead. And so repeat, ad finitum.

This, in essence is nothing new. In 1993, a program called CuSeeMe emerged from several US universities, which early internet users jumped on, possibly with the same (but somewhat muted at the time) gusto. You chose a ‘reflector’ and there were people… don’t like them – choose a different ‘reflector’ and so on. (A ‘reflector’ was basically a server which sent out all the streams of people). So aside from the plural aspect, Chatroulette has been long coming.

It would perhaps come as no surprise then that recent statistics tell us that 89% of people on there are male, and nearly half of all people are from the USA (as is generally seen with any English website given the population and internet access spread).

For anyone considering a go on there, not all may be what it seems. Firstly, it’s not for kids. Some people are using the service to ‘enjoy’ themselves to put it mildly and you never know when that’s going to pop up, quite literally. Second, anyone can use a program like ManyCam to send out whatever they like over their supposed webcam – from violence, political propaganda to downright illegal material.

I’m sure there will come stories of love, marriage and babies as a result of this apparently new phenomena, but equally those of hate and maybe crime against people too. Chatroulette’s owner, a 17 year old Russian, is trying to block the use of a new site Chat Roulette Map which geolocates the users. Presumably then, Chatroulette is exposing each user’s IP address, which is scary stuff. But also explains how the site has been able to scale so well, as the webcam aspect would be all peer-to-peer and doesn’t have to use a central server to distribute the bandwidth hungry streams.

I have seen some good though. Talented people, such as this piano playing guy dong a running commentary on his unsuspecting webcam viewers, is a brilliantly entertaining video.

Expect more, similar, wacky uses of the site to appear on cheaply produced TV clips shows soon. Can’t wait. I think.

Have you any experience with Chatroulette? We’d love to know, the good, the bad and the ugly!

Tags: chat roulette, cuseeme, webcam security

This entry was posted on Friday, March 19th, 2010 at 8:04 am and is filed under Features, Webcam News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.