ChatRoulette - Potential for other uses

Ben Folds playing a concert live on Chatroulette

ChatRoulette is a website that was established a year ago and allows one person anywhere in the world to be connected at random to another user so that they can see and talk to each other. Anyone (Well, there are a couple of rules. Like you must be over 16, and clothed) can use it so long as you have a keyboard and a web camera. A microphone and speakers for audio are optional.

Established in November 2009 by high school student Andrey Ternovskiy from Moscow, ChatRoulette has gone from 500 visitors shortly after it launched to 50,000 a month later. By the start of March 2010 it had an estimated 1.5 million users and an Alexa rank of 1864 near the end of March.

On the surface it's just another form of social networking coupled with the negative connotations of "seedy" and "pervy old men" that camera websites notoriously drag along with them. Although you are likely to come across legions of naked exhibitionists, mostly men (you have been warned), users are finding a number of increasingly elaborate and inventive uses for the service.

For instance, there are various Chatroulette drinking games appearing on the internet. Some rules include "Guess the age of a fellow Rouletter, every year you are away from the truth = a finger." and "Someone wants you to speak because they 'love your accent' - 2 fingers."

This is what anonymity does.

Ben Folds played a concert and had Chatroulette projected across the back of the stage. He improvised songs relating to what the person who appears on the screen is doing. Check it out here.

FCUK recently ran a competition on Chatroulette. The challenge was to "chat up" women on the website, described on the FCUK blog as "the most densely populated patch of guy terrain on the web." and "A hostile environment worthy of a Ross Kemp special." The winner, Paul Flynn, received £250 in FCUK vouchers.

People also play their own games within it such as holding a bit of paper to the camera with "Tilt your head to read this, I win" written on it, and a tally of how many people they've tricked.

Chatroulette is still in it's infancy, though it has grown a lot recently and you can expect to see plenty of other uses and developments within it. Personally, I can't see the benefit of "meeting" and chatting to a stranger on the net when you can get much more from meeting a person in the real world, who wont disappear when one of you decides you've had enough.

Here's an interview with Chatroulette creator Andrey Ternovskiy.