ChatRoulette.com is an anonymized, non-identifying chat service that randomly pairs users to chat with one another via video, audio, and text messaging. The site was created by Russian 17-year-old Andrey Ternovskiy. ChatRoulette launched on 5 December 2009
ChatRoulette is significant from a research point of view since it provides a potentially non-anonymized window (an image via webcam functionality) upon which to explore the social mechanics of anonymized communities. Furthermore, ChatRoulette suggests a new type of community structure that evades connected networks: the probabilistic community. We place a probabilistic community in opposition to the typical social network, in which a user may interact and connect (with or without identity) with multiple other users. In contrast, a probabilistic community relies on the transitory connections between users that cannot be maintained beyond the initial period of contact. 1, though previously it had been associated with the chat service http://head-to-head.org, which launched on 10 November 2009. The site is also accessible at the http://chatrt.com domain. A user is paired with an unidentified, random user by clicking Play and may end the browsing session by clicking Stop. A small number of options are built into the platform, including the ability to connect with only users with an operational webcam, to be paired with another user automatically after a chat session has ended, and to disable the reception and/or projection of audio or video. A “report” button is also available to inform the website’s administrator of potentially unacceptable content. Finally, the platform allows the user to choose both audio and video sources: generally, the user chooses the webcam, but unrelated software (such as ManyCam2) can be utilized to alter the video or append additional images or text.