if you haven’t heard of chatroulette, then i give it mere days before it has giant buzz. although coverage in the new york times about its 17 year old creator from moscow (pictured on bike), has already spiked its traffic over the last week. as the name implies, you sit at your computer and press the play button, and the game of chance takes over as you are matched with a stranger from anywhere in the world for a real live video chat. you can keep shuffling through people or engage via IM and microphone. there is  no need to register, log in or be invited. one simple click and you are live, which makes it dangerous for kids, since it has no screening whatsoever, and i will say that it can be a creepy experience.

when the pints gave it a whirl, we were hard pressed to find many women on it and there seemed to be a lot of teens in sunglasses and anonymous garb on the service. however, i couldn’t help but be fascinated since it appealed to my short attention span and i could shuffle through people without feeling rude or guilty. i can’t seem to do that as well at a cocktail party. today, i met an engineer from zurich, switzerland, a fashionable sunglasses lover in paris and a “pirate” from budapest who was on it “to steal everyone’s loot”. reminiscent of the age of chatrooms, folks can create their own interesting personas, but now they have a video camera in their face. it also makes geography less and less of an obstacle in terms of connections, not one person i connected with on chatroulette was in the USA.

while there is some advertising potential for this service to exist as a viable commercial business the anonymity, randomness and stranger interaction, while giving chatroulette its excitement, can also mean inappropriate behavior and huge parental fears. its young entrepreneur will have to address these issues, as well as the investment in scale, as more and more people start joining the chat gambling game. i predict his bandwidth and server needs will quickly outweigh his adsense revenue. however, kudos to the youngster whose project at its core, illustrates that humans are motivated by social connections and such simple technologies make it possible.