Chatroulette: Risky, Revolting, Revealing And Revolutionary?

On this week's All Tech Considered, we discuss the Web phenomenon of Chatroulette, a simple Web service for randomly connecting with others using webcams all over the world. We should warn you before clicking the link for the site that you will see some very inappropriate things in the course of using it and you should keep kids far, far, far away from it.

That being said, here are some other links and info we found:

• The video above is from Casey Neistat and does a great job explaining some of what you'll find on the service.
  
• More amateur sociology about the makeup of Chatroulette users comes from Matthew Stringer. Part two of his analysis is here.
  
• New York magazine gives the site a much more touchy-feely write-up than perhaps it deserves.
  
• You would think Good Morning Americawould be a little more shocked by this sort of thing.
  
• The New York Times talks to Andrey Ternovskiy, said to be the 17-year-old Moscow creator of the site. Think he's feeling a little overwhelmed with all the attention right now?
  
• Blog of the Nation on the topic.
  
• One more, from Time.com, which has some strangely placed text links within their story.

Personally, I found it to be disturbing, entertaining and strangely addictive once you get over the initial nervousness of chatting and if you have a strong stomach.

In my experience, the network was a little flaky, so even the real, successful chats I had sometimes ended in a frozen Web cam. It left an ephemeral feel that made real encounters even more precious.

And I also saw lots of dirty things I'd like to forget. Is it revolutionary? Not really. But it's a bit of an adrenaline rush and I could see it being useful if it were incorporated into a set group of users, say Facebook's user database. You'd need heavy-duty filtering options, but how great would it be to be able to control the randomness a little? Then again, that may be defeating the purpose and kill what makes Chatroulette so unique.

Have you tried it? Are your eyes ruined forever? Tell us what you think by posting a comment.