Chatroulette
Encyclopedia
Chatroulette is a website
that pairs strangers from around the world together for webcam
-based conversations. Visitors to the website begin an online chat (video, audio and text) with another visitor who is chosen at random. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection.
, and that he wrote the first version of Chatroulette in "two days and two nights". Ternovskiy chose the name "Chatroulette" after watching The Deer Hunter
, a 1978 film set in the Vietnam War
in which prisoners of war are forced to play Russian roulette
.
In early November 2009, shortly after the site launched, it had 500 visitors per day. One month later there were 50,000. The site has been featured in The New York Times
, The New Yorker
, New York magazine
, and on Good Morning America
, Newsnight
in the United Kingdom
, Tosh.0
, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In February 2010, there were about 35,000 people on Chatroulette at any given time. Around the beginning of March, Ternovskiy estimated the site to have around 1.5 million users, approximately 33% of them from the United States and 5% from Germany.
An early growth phase was funded by a $10,000 investment from Ternovskiy's parents which he soon paid back. , Ternovskiy was running the site from his childhood bedroom, assisted by four programmers who were working remotely, and the site was supported through advertising links to an online dating service.
According to one informal study published in March 2010, nearly half of all Chatroulette spins connected a user with someone in the USA, while the next most likely country was France with 15%. On average in sessions showing a single person, 89% of these were male and 11% were female. 8% of spins showed multiple people behind the camera. 1 in 3 females appeared as such a group. That number is 1 in 12 for males. A user was more likely to encounter a webcam featuring no person at all than one featuring a sole female. 1 in 8 spins yielded possibly objectionable content. A user was twice as likely to encounter a sign requesting female nudity than to encounter actual female nudity.
The website uses Adobe Flash
to display video and access the user's webcam
. Flash's peer-to-peer network capabilities (via RTMFP
) allow almost all video and audio streams to travel directly between user computers, without using server bandwidth. However, certain combinations of routers will not allow UDP
traffic to flow between them, and then it is necessary to fall back to RTMP
.
Celebrities claiming to have used Chatroulette include Kelly Osbourne
, Drake
, Daniel Tosh
, Neal Boortz
, Joel Madden
, Nicole Richie
, Jessica Alba
, Kevin Smith
, Paris Hilton
, Ashton Kutcher
, Chris Brown,Justin Bieber
, Professor Green
and Olly Murs
.
On February 27, 2010 at the Soundwave Festival in Melbourne
, Australia, Faith No More
streamed their festival performance live on Chatroulette.
Niche sites with functionality imitating Chatroulette have been growing in number, although none have yet gained its popularity and notoriety.
Chatroulette was parodied in the South Park
season 14 episode "You Have 0 Friends
".
An NCIS TV episode (Season 7, Episode 22: Borderland) featured a comedy relief section where character Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly
) was continually 'next-ed' by the chatroulette community. It was later revealed that Timothy McGee
(Sean Murray) had rigged his computer to disconnect each chat after a few seconds.
Professor Green
's song: "Kids That Love To Dance" (ft. Emeli Sandé
) also makes use of a Chatroulette-style program.
The second episode of CSI: NY
that aired on October 1, 2010 featured a Chatroulette-like program on which one of the lab techs witnesses a woman murdered right in front of him.
and South Park
have lampooned this aspect of the service and nudity has become an established part of the site's notoriety.
In response, the website has encouraged users to be at least 18 years old, and prohibits pornographic behavior. Users who experience harassment or witness illegal, immoral, or pornographic activity may report the offending user. After three users have complained about the same participant within 5 minutes the user is banned from the service for 10–40 minutes.
As of mid-2011, bans have been increased to 24 hours but no longer requires user feedback since the reporting button has been removed from the UI.
The website's users who are banned are now punished by redirecting them to an adult chatroulette or you can do "community service" where you scroll through screenshots and mark ones that violate the terms of the site.
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
that pairs strangers from around the world together for webcam
Webcam
A webcam is a video camera that feeds its images in real time to a computer or computer network, often via USB, ethernet, or Wi-Fi.Their most popular use is the establishment of video links, permitting computers to act as videophones or videoconference stations. This common use as a video camera...
-based conversations. Visitors to the website begin an online chat (video, audio and text) with another visitor who is chosen at random. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection.
Overview
The Chatroulette web site was created by Andrey Ternovskiy, a 17-year-old high school student in Moscow, Russia. Ternovskiy says the concept arose from video chats he used to have with friends on SkypeSkype
Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chat over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system...
, and that he wrote the first version of Chatroulette in "two days and two nights". Ternovskiy chose the name "Chatroulette" after watching The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...
, a 1978 film set in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
in which prisoners of war are forced to play Russian roulette
Russian roulette
Russian roulette is a potentially lethal game of chance in which participants place a single round in a revolver, spin the cylinder, place the muzzle against their head and pull the trigger...
.
In early November 2009, shortly after the site launched, it had 500 visitors per day. One month later there were 50,000. The site has been featured in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, New York magazine
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
, and on Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
, Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Tosh.0
Tosh.0
Tosh.0 is an American television series hosted by comedian Daniel Tosh, who provides sarcastic commentary on online video clips, society, celebrities, and other parts of popular culture.-History:...
, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In February 2010, there were about 35,000 people on Chatroulette at any given time. Around the beginning of March, Ternovskiy estimated the site to have around 1.5 million users, approximately 33% of them from the United States and 5% from Germany.
An early growth phase was funded by a $10,000 investment from Ternovskiy's parents which he soon paid back. , Ternovskiy was running the site from his childhood bedroom, assisted by four programmers who were working remotely, and the site was supported through advertising links to an online dating service.
According to one informal study published in March 2010, nearly half of all Chatroulette spins connected a user with someone in the USA, while the next most likely country was France with 15%. On average in sessions showing a single person, 89% of these were male and 11% were female. 8% of spins showed multiple people behind the camera. 1 in 3 females appeared as such a group. That number is 1 in 12 for males. A user was more likely to encounter a webcam featuring no person at all than one featuring a sole female. 1 in 8 spins yielded possibly objectionable content. A user was twice as likely to encounter a sign requesting female nudity than to encounter actual female nudity.
The website uses Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
to display video and access the user's webcam
Webcam
A webcam is a video camera that feeds its images in real time to a computer or computer network, often via USB, ethernet, or Wi-Fi.Their most popular use is the establishment of video links, permitting computers to act as videophones or videoconference stations. This common use as a video camera...
. Flash's peer-to-peer network capabilities (via RTMFP
Real Time Media Flow Protocol
Real Time Media Flow Protocol is a proprietary protocol developed by Adobe Systems. RTMFPenables low latency UDP streamings and direct peer-to-peer communication between multiple Adobe Flash Players...
) allow almost all video and audio streams to travel directly between user computers, without using server bandwidth. However, certain combinations of routers will not allow UDP
User Datagram Protocol
The User Datagram Protocol is one of the core members of the Internet Protocol Suite, the set of network protocols used for the Internet. With UDP, computer applications can send messages, in this case referred to as datagrams, to other hosts on an Internet Protocol network without requiring...
traffic to flow between them, and then it is necessary to fall back to RTMP
Real Time Messaging Protocol
Real Time Messaging Protocol was initially a proprietary protocol developed by Macromedia for streaming audio, video and data over the Internet, between a Flash player and a server...
.
Culture
A participant whose chat partner clicks the Chatroulette Next button to move on to a new partner is described as being "nexted".Celebrities claiming to have used Chatroulette include Kelly Osbourne
Kelly Osbourne
Kelly Michelle Lee Osbourne is an English media personality, television personality, host, judge, fashion designer, singer, and actress, best known for being the daughter of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne...
, Drake
Drake (entertainer)
Aubrey Drake Graham , who records under the mononym Drake, is a Canadian recording artist and actor. He originally became known for playing Jimmy Brooks on the television series Degrassi: The Next Generation....
, Daniel Tosh
Daniel Tosh
Daniel Dwight Tosh is an American stand-up comedian and host of the Comedy Central television show, Tosh.0.-Personal life:...
, Neal Boortz
Neal Boortz
Neal A. Boortz, Jr. is an American Libertarian radio host, author, and political commentator. His nationally syndicated talk show, The Neal Boortz Show, airs throughout the United States on Dial Global . It is ranked seventh in overall listeners, with 4.25+ million per week...
, Joel Madden
Joel Madden
Joel Rueben Madden is an American singer, record producer, actor, DJ, and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, best known as the lead vocalist for the pop punk band Good Charlotte.-Early life:...
, Nicole Richie
Nicole Richie
Nicole Camille Richie is an American fashion designer, author, actress, singer and television personality. Her father was Peter Michael Escovedo, a musician who played for a brief time with Lionel Richie, and her mother Karen was the executive assistant for Sheila Escovedo...
, Jessica Alba
Jessica Alba
Jessica Marie Alba is an American television and film actress. She began her television and movie appearances at age 13 in Camp Nowhere and The Secret World of Alex Mack . Alba rose to prominence as the lead actress in the television series Dark Angel...
, Kevin Smith
Kevin Smith
Kevin Patrick Smith is an American screenwriter, actor, film producer, and director, as well as a popular comic book writer, author, comedian/raconteur, and internet radio personality best recognized by viewers as Silent Bob...
, Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton
Paris Whitney Hilton is an American businesswoman, heiress, and socialite. She is a great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton . Hilton is known for her controversial participation in a sex tape in 2003, and appearance on the television series The Simple Life alongside fellow socialite and childhood...
, Ashton Kutcher
Ashton Kutcher
Christopher Ashton Kutcher , best known as Ashton Kutcher, is an American actor, producer, former fashion model and comedian, best known for his portrayal of Michael Kelso in the Fox sitcom That '70s Show...
, Chris Brown,Justin Bieber
Justin Bieber
Justin Drew Bieber is a Canadian pop/R&B singer, songwriter and actor. Bieber was discovered in 2008 by Scooter Braun, who came across Bieber's videos on YouTube and later became his manager...
, Professor Green
Professor Green
Professor Green , better known by his stage name Professor Green, is a British rapper. He was signed to The Beats, a record label run by Mike Skinner and Ted Mayhem, until 12 February 2008, as the label went under. He won the inaugural JumpOff MySpace £50,000 battle rap tournament in July 2008...
and Olly Murs
Olly Murs
Oliver Stanley "Olly" Murs is an English singer-songwriter and TV presenter. Murs rose to fame after being the runner-up on the sixth series of The X Factor...
.
On February 27, 2010 at the Soundwave Festival in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia, Faith No More
Faith No More
Faith No More is an American rock band from San Francisco, California, formed originally as Faith No Man in 1981 by bassist Billy Gould, keyboardist Wade Worthington, vocalist Michael Morris and drummer Mike Bordin. A year later when Worthington was replaced by keyboardist Roddy Bottum, and Mike...
streamed their festival performance live on Chatroulette.
Niche sites with functionality imitating Chatroulette have been growing in number, although none have yet gained its popularity and notoriety.
Chatroulette was parodied in the South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
season 14 episode "You Have 0 Friends
You Have 0 Friends
"You Have 0 Friends" is the fourth episode of the fourteenth season of the American animated television series South Park, and the 199th episode of the series overall. It first aired on Comedy Central in the United States on April 7, 2010...
".
An NCIS TV episode (Season 7, Episode 22: Borderland) featured a comedy relief section where character Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly
Michael Weatherly
Michael Manning Weatherly, Jr. is an American actor, best known for his roles as Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo on the television series NCIS, and Logan Cale on the television series Dark Angel.-Early life:...
) was continually 'next-ed' by the chatroulette community. It was later revealed that Timothy McGee
Timothy McGee
Timothy "Tim" McGee is a fictional character from the CBS television series NCIS. He is portrayed by Sean Murray. Timothy McGee is a special agent investigating crime in this police procedural show...
(Sean Murray) had rigged his computer to disconnect each chat after a few seconds.
Professor Green
Professor Green
Professor Green , better known by his stage name Professor Green, is a British rapper. He was signed to The Beats, a record label run by Mike Skinner and Ted Mayhem, until 12 February 2008, as the label went under. He won the inaugural JumpOff MySpace £50,000 battle rap tournament in July 2008...
's song: "Kids That Love To Dance" (ft. Emeli Sandé
Emeli Sandé
Adele Emeli Sandé , known by her stage name Emeli Sande, is a Scottish R&B and Soul recording artist and songwriter, from Aberdeen, Scotland...
) also makes use of a Chatroulette-style program.
The second episode of CSI: NY
CSI: NY
CSI: NY is an American police procedural television series that premiered on September 22, 2004, on CBS. The show follows the investigations of a team of NYPD forensic scientists and police officers as they unveil the circumstances behind mysterious and unusual deaths as well as other crimes...
that aired on October 1, 2010 featured a Chatroulette-like program on which one of the lab techs witnesses a woman murdered right in front of him.
Controversial content
According to a survey carried out by RJMetrics, approximately 1 in 8 of feeds from Chatroulette involved 'R-rated' content. Parody shows such as The Daily ShowThe Daily Show
The Daily Show , is an American late night satirical television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. The half-hour long show premiered on July 21, 1996, and was hosted by Craig Kilborn until December 1998...
and South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
have lampooned this aspect of the service and nudity has become an established part of the site's notoriety.
In response, the website has encouraged users to be at least 18 years old, and prohibits pornographic behavior. Users who experience harassment or witness illegal, immoral, or pornographic activity may report the offending user. After three users have complained about the same participant within 5 minutes the user is banned from the service for 10–40 minutes.
As of mid-2011, bans have been increased to 24 hours but no longer requires user feedback since the reporting button has been removed from the UI.
The website's users who are banned are now punished by redirecting them to an adult chatroulette or you can do "community service" where you scroll through screenshots and mark ones that violate the terms of the site.
External links
- Chatroulette.com (official website)
- Bits Blog: Chatroulette’s Creator, 17, Introduces Himself from The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
(February 13, 2010) - Barnett about CR from CNNCNNCable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
- Profile of Andrey Ternovskiy in The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...