Chatroulette

Chatroulette
Type of site
Online chat, voice chat, video chat
Available inEnglish
OwnerAndrey Ternovskiy
Created byAndrey Ternovskiy
CEOAndrew William Done
URLchatroulette.com
CommercialNo
RegistrationNot Required
LaunchedNovember 16, 2009; 15 years ago (2009-11-16)[1]
Current statusActive

Chatroulette is an online chat website that pairs random users with a choice between two other users for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website begin an online chat (audio and video) with another visitor. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection.[2][3]

In February 2010, a few months after the website was created,[4] about 35,000 people were on Chatroulette at any given time. Around the beginning of March, creator Andrey Ternovskiy estimated the site to have around 1.5 million users.[5] According to a survey carried out by RJMetrics, about one in eight spins on Chatroulette yielded "R-rated" content.[6] Parody shows such as The Daily Show and South Park have lampooned this aspect of the service, and nudity has become an established part of the site's notoriety.[7]

In spring 2020, Ternovskiy appointed Andrew William Done, Australian tech entrepreneur, as the CEO of Chatroulette.[8] Done previously founded IT consultancy Simple Machines in Sydney, Australia, and before Chatroulette was CTO for rental platform Goodlord in London.[9] Following product changes in spring 2020, and enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic, Chatroulette's user numbers have more than doubled between 2019 and 2020.[9]

  1. ^ "Chatroulette.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools". WHOIS. Retrieved 2016-11-15.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference CNN was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Harley, James. "What is this video chat craze used for?". Wocchat.com. Archived from the original on 20 November 2016. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
  4. ^ "Whois chatroulette.com". www.whois.com. Archived from the original on 2020-07-27. Retrieved 2019-01-08.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference spiegel was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference techcrunch1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ ""Herr Done, warum sehe ich hier so viele Penisse?"". www.20min.ch (in German). 2020-04-11. Archived from the original on 2020-06-10. Retrieved 2020-06-12.
  9. ^ a b "Kaffee mit..." Finanz und Wirtschaft (in German). 8 May 2020. Archived from the original on 2020-09-21. Retrieved 2020-06-26.