Chatroulette is a website which certainly gained a significant amount of notoriety since it was first launched in 2009. Like many internet sensations, it wasn’t long before the site began to become a regular feature within pop culture across the globe.
The site is based on the concept of internet communication, using a webcam, microphone and keyboard to ‘chat’. The ‘roulette’ aspect is based on the fact that this interaction is randomised – much in the same way that games of roulette which you might find at sites like http://www.chatroulettepeople.com/ work by generating a random number. Users may leave their current conversation and start another by initiating another randomised connection at any time.Shortly after the site first launch, it was receiving 500 visitors a day. This number had reached 50,000 within just one month. Soon after this, mention of the site began to crop up within the media, and it was featured in a number of high profile American newspapers. It was also widely talked about on TV shows across the world.
By February 2010, statistics stated that there were about 35,000 using Chatroulette at any given time, and the site was parodied in the hit TV show, South Park. Later the same month, the American rock band Faith No More streamed their live performance at the Soundwave Festival via Chatroulette, giving the site further prominence within pop culture.
Around this time, several high profile celebrities also claimed to have used the Chatroulette website. These included socialites Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton, actor Ashton Kutcher and teen singing sensation Justin Bieber.
Chatroulette also went on to feature in a comic relief style scene within an episode of NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service). It was also later given a more sinister representation (without giving the name of the site itself) in an episode of CSI: NY which aired during October 2010. As this particularly online community continues to expand, it seems unlikely that we will have seen the last of Chatroulette’s pop culture appearances.