I have recently been hearing about this new social site called “Chatroulette“. Immediately my reaction was “Ugh, another one?!”. But I have to admit, this one puts a different spin on the whole concept of social networking. Basically, this site – created by a 17-year old Russian programmer – connects users from all over the world via webcam. Visiting the site itself  is very straightforward. You just click PLAY to start. Suddenly you are arbitrarily connected to someone else who is also “playing”. If this person interests you, you can choose to interact with them via text or voice…if not, then you can click ‘next’ and be connected to the next person at random. According to an article in NY Mag titled “The Human Shuffle”, people use this method for any number of different reasons:

“Early ChatRoulette users traded anecdotes on comment boards with the eerie intensity of shipwreck survivors, both excited and freaked out by what they’d seen. There was a man who wore a deer head and opened every conversation with “What up DOE!?” A guy from Sweden was reportedly speed-drawing strangers’ portraits. Someone with a guitar was improvising songs for anyone who’d give him a topic. One man popped up on people’s screens in the act of fornicating with a head of lettuce. Others dressed like ninjas, tried to persuade women to expose themselves, and played spontaneous transcontinental games of Connect Four. Occasionally, people even made nonvirtual connections: One punk-music blogger met a group of people from Michigan who ended up driving eleven hours to crash at his house for a concert in New York.”

The video below may be able to help better explain this growing phenomenom: