Chatroulette

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Chatroulette

Chatroulette official logo [1] Type Online chat, video chat, voice chat Launch Date November, 2009 Status active Product Line product Platform platform Website www.chatroulette.com

ChatRoulette is a video-conferencing website that connects strangers from around the globe using web cameras and chat rooms. Once the user is randomly paired with another user, three actions can be taken: click "next", video chat, or text chat. The "next" button ends the current connection and pairs the user up with a new person; users can continue clicking "next" to shuffle through different users until they are satisfied with their pairing. The "video chat" button allows the user to communicate with the randomly paired user with via video. The "text chat" allows the user to communicate with the user they are paired with via instant message.

These chat rooms allow people to interact as they wish; There are no censors or filters to inhibit people from being vulgar or offensive. Notoriously, this leads to extreme voyeurism, 'public' nudity, and sexual acts. As a result, Chatroulette is categorized as a 'not safe for work' site. This voyeurism and anonymity leads to many ethical implications.

History

The website was first launched as "Head-to-Head.org" on November 2009 by a 17-year-old high school student in Moscow, Russia named Andrey Ternovsky. The inspiration for Chatroulette came from the various video chats Ternovskiy had with his friends on the Skype platform. Because Ternovskiy's friends didn't like the site, he advertised on forums. People started to use it, but Ternovskiy thought the name was not right, and after watching a scene from The Deer Hunter that depicted prisoners of war being forced to play Russian roulette, he bought the Chatroulette domain for seven dollars. Ternovsky ran the site from his bedroom, working alongside four programmers who worked virtually. The site's main source of income came through advertising links to an online dating service.

Screenshot of a Chatroulette session

One of the first things that garnered popularity for the site was a Brazilian soccer posting a notice inviting like-minded people to Chatroulette to talk about the sport. Hundreds of people logged on, and at that point, made up about 50% of the website's user-base. However, instead of the original intent of meeting up online and talking about the sport, "they took off their clothes".

Chatroulette has also influenced the media. In particular, the 2012 movie Smiley was based around a serial killer who frequented a site very similar to Chatroulette.

Statistics

When the site first launched in November 2009, Chatroulette registered approximately 500 visitors per day. One month later, this number had jumped to 50,000. By the beginning of March, Chatroulette boasted a user-base of approximately 1.5 million users. 33% of them were from the United States and 5% from Germany.

Demographics

Piechart by Gender

• In a study done by Tech Crunch done in March 2010, approximately 50% of all Chatroulette spins resulted in connecting a user with someone in the USA. The next most likely country was France at 15%.
• The study also indicated that on average in sessions with only one person in the frame, 89% of users were male while only 11% were female.
• Only 8% of the spins showed multiple people in the webcam frame, and the likelihood of females appearing in a group is 1 in 3, but for males is 1 in 12.
• Female prevalence on Chatroulette is so low that a user is more likely to be paired with a session in which no one is in the frame than a session with only one female.
• Additionally, 1 in 8 chat sessions were found to have objectionable content. Frames with objectionable content were further broken down to study the "pervert rate" by country, with the United Kingdom outranking other countries with a "pervert concentration" of 22%.
• Around 90% of users are under the age of 30.
• Younger users view Chatroulette as a platform to be "mischievous" while maintaining relative anonymity.

Online Chat Websites

Many other online chat websites exist that allow users to communicate in different ways including instant messaging,voice chat, and video chat.

• Tinychat is similar to Chatroulette but also allows users to create their own virtual chat room on any topic. A person can choose to chat in multiple rooms at once.
• Omegle allows users to communicate with strangers without registering and offers a mobile application that lets users chat with strangers from a cellular device. Spy Mode, connects three strangers where one stranger asks a question and the other two answer or discuss. Omegle also allows visitors to use Facebook Connect in order to meet strangers with common interests
• Zumbl is a social media website where users can anonymously chat with other users. Users can then tag each other with personality tags they felt resembled others during their conversation. Zumbl won the Samsung Innovation Award 2012.
• 6rounds is a cross-platform social media platform allowing users to chat, collaborate and even play games in real-time. It is currently available to the web, Android and iOS platform.
• tokbox

Ethical Issues

Screenshot of a Chatroulette session

Since Chatroulette doesn't require user registration, there has been a lot of criticism surrounding the web-conferencing site. The site has developed a reputation for sometimes displaying lewd images in chat sessions, and is often a platform for "cyber sex". This especially has drawn a lot of attention in the media, due to the lack of enforcement on age restrictions. In CNET news, an article warns parents to be wary of Chatroulette's alarming images and indecent exposure. Sam Anderson, a writer for New York Magazine, refers to Chatroulette as "chaotic and untamed", and describes how some people he encountered on the site shamelessly engaged in sexual acts on camera, some displayed obscene images, and one even showed a picture of a man who hung himself. Due to the fact that the site is uncensored, users never know what images they may come across, which could result in various negative consequences, including embarrassment, emotional damage, and exposure to mature images at a young age.

Chatroulette's attempts to improve

Because of all the negative attention surrounding the site's pornographic content, Chatroulette has responded by encouraging users to be at least 18 years old, and stating that the site prohibits "pornographic" behavior. Users can also report other users for behavior that offends them. If that user gets three complaints, the user is temporarily banned from using the site. In an effort to further combat this problem, Chatroulette also tried applying an algorithm that screened users who violated their video chat policies, in addition to creating a Safe Mode feature. However, in August 2012, the company took down the Safe Mode feature, and instead explicitly stated in their terms and conditions that nudity is not allowed on the site. There is now a pop-up window explaining these new rules to users of the site.

See Also

• Cybersex
• Cyberculture
• Pornography
• Social Networking Services

External Links

• Official Website
• The Surreal World of Chatroulette
  • Published February 20, 2010 in The New York Times
• Roulette Russian
  • Published May 17, 2010 in The New Yorker
• The Human Shuffle
  • Published February 5, 2010 in New York magazine
• Chatroulette: Talking to Strangers Is Cheap and Often Racy
  • Published February 13th, 2010 in Good Morning America
• From the WebTeam
  • Published March 10, 2010 in BBC Newsnight
• Chat Roulette
  • Published February 24, 2010 on Tosh.0
• Tech-Talch - Chatroulette
  • Published March 4, 2010 on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart