A popular, yet controversial website originating from a teenager's bedroom is allowing strangers from around the world to be face-to-face with the click of a button.
Chatroulette started November 2009, according to The New York Times online, when Andrey Ternovskiy, a 17-year-old high school student from Russia, decided to take the Skype concept to another level.
After being bored by talking with the same people on Skype, Ternovskiy became interested in the idea of being connected with strangers from around the world, and within three days, Chatroulette was created.
"I just like being able to talk to people from all over the world," said Tori Guthrie, a junior in social work. "I still do Skype, but this is more intriguing to me."
Chatroulette allows people from all around the world, with the right connections, to video chat. The video chat may be canceled at any time and users may connect with someone new instantly.
Within a month of launching, Chatroulette was averaging 500 visitors a day. A month later, the site had already raised its average visitors to 50,000 per day.
The site has become extremely popular in America, with nearly 50 percent of all spins connecting someone in America, most likely with a college or high school student. The next highest country is France, with 15 percent of total users.
"I mainly chat with other college students around America," Guthrie said. "I still have to go through some strange and vulgar people to get to normal people my age."
"I see little value in it for students except for college age toilet humor," said Robert French, public relations professor.
The controversial aspect of the site comes from its content regulation, or the lack of it. Chatroulette cannot control its users or what they choose to show the people they are connected with in a chat.
According to a recent study, one of every eight spins yielded objectionable content or a request for objectionable content.
This overwhelming number caused Ternovskiy, who claims to want a clean site, to add a report button to the site. Now, after a user has been reported three times, the user will be banned from the site from 10 to 40 minutes.
"Every time that I get on the site, I see things I didn't intend or want to see, but I just report them and move on to the next person," Guthrie said.
Dr. Susan Waters, an assistant professor in communications and journalism, has already seen the same problem with the site.
While Waters was teaching a graduate level class in social media last semester, two of her students showed her the site for the first time. Next, the students showed Waters how to enter a chat and immediately were shocked by the image of a naked man.
"The University should have a firewall and that medium should be blocked," Waters said. "Students shouldn't be able to access this on campus."
Chatroulette has set an age limit of 16 to be able to participate, but has had trouble enforcing the limit.
"It's a fraud," French said. "There are plenty of 12-year-olds that can figure out how to enter a date on the site."
Guthrie said she agrees the site makes it easy for users under the required age limit to access and participate in video chat.
"Chatroulette needs to do a better job enforcing the age limit," Guthrie said. "I see people all the time on the site that can't be over 13 or 14."
Chatroulette has already gained enormous amounts of publicity, being featured in The New York Times, as well as on Good Morning America, South Park and The Daily Show with John Stewart.
Chatroulette, which now has more than 1.5 million users, still continues to be run from Ternovskiy's bedroom, with only the help of a few programmers who work remotely.
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
