ChatRoulette.com - Next, Next, Next, Uh oh
Not sure whether it was the guy pointing a handgun, the large naked guy in the Mexican wrestling mask or the trio of half-drunk teen thugs that had me most shocked while “observing” ChatRoulette.com in-person for the first time. But really, if there’s anything I’ve learned after being on the Internet for 16 years, there is no shortage of unsettling content available a click or two away. Not convinced? Something as simple as a Google Image search with the SafeSearch function turned off can provide hours of entertainment.
As anyone who has used the ChatRoulette can tell you, the possibility of seeing inappropriate content is extremely high, and even if nobody wants to admit it, that’s a huge part of the curiosity and appeal. I was fortunate enough to share the experience in a safe-ish way with 150 people at a party Friday night. Each time an instant of ‘inappropriateness’ flashed on the screen, the room erupted in a mix of groans, cheers, covered eyes and shouts of ‘Next, Next, Next!’
ChatRoulette.com, which launched back in November of last year, is the brainchild of Moscow teenager Andrey Ternovskiy. The site creates one-to-one connections between you and another randomly chosen webcam user anywhere in the world. ‘Random’ is the keyword here – one minute you may be talking football with a guy from Zimbabwe, the next you’ve dropped into a house party of screaming teenage girls in Nebraska. And you better hold up your end and be interesting or you’ll be ‘Nexted’ – the term used when the party on the other end of the chat gets bored and “clicks on.”
It has been recently lampooned by Jon Stewart on a recent Daily Show (PG+ content). He showed clips of reporters engaged in a near feeding frenzy, holding up the site as the latest example of everything that is wrong and scary on the Internet. While I don’t deny that there are creeps on ChatRoulette waiting for their few seconds of exposure (pun totally intended), these ‘creeps’ exist on every interactive forum, virtual world and social networking site out there. But despite all the negatives, some media experts have put forth the possibility that the simple user-experience of ChatRoulette may push video conferencing into the mainstream such as this recent Advertising Age article.
I’d love to know what you think? Will Chatroulette grow into a mainstream service like Twitter, where users can randomly meet and develop friendships as they have on other Internet services, or is this just a short-lived craze? Don’t worry, you can get back to me after you’ve found and disconnected all the webcams in your kids’ rooms.