I had never heard of Chatroulette prior to February, 2010. I saw some tech blogs pick up a story in the New York Times that the mysterious creator of this service was a 17 year old kid in Russia. Added to that, New York-based venture capitalist Fred Wilson offered to fly this kid to New York to meet him.
There you go, like many of you, I got the back story of Chatroulette before actually using the service. It’s like Chris Rock joking that the rapper 50 Cent was known for being shot 9 times before anyone heard his music. Everyone heard about a rapper that got shot 9 times, but not the actual song.
That is how I felt about Chatroulette. I saw this long word that started with the letter C before realizing that it was a compound word of “Chat” and “Roulette”. The truth is that I wasn’t that familiar with what the term NSFW meant before going on Chatroulette for the first time, although it was in many reviews. That changed fast.
Chatroulette is a website where users engage in random video chat. It is a very simple design. Your video on the bottom. A stranger’s video on the top. If you don’t like what you see or hear, just click the next button. Genius! I had conversations with people in London and Berlin, from my laptop in New York. I convinced college kids to brush their teeth on camera and a 12 year old girl to remove her pony tail. Wow, random chat is fun.
Just be warned of porn. There are people who put sickening stuff on there, so it is highly advised to keep Chatroulette away from children.
