A new website that has been described as "surreal", "addictive" and "frightening" is proving a sensation around the world – and attracting a reputation as a haven for no-holds-barred, explicit material.
Chatroulette, which was launched in November, has rocketed in popularity thanks to its simple premise: internet video chats with random strangers.
When users visit the site and switch on their webcams, they are suddenly connected to another, randomly chosen person who is doing precisely the same thing somewhere else in the world.
Once they are logged in together, chatters can do anything they like: talk to each other, type messages, entertain each other – or just say goodbye, hit the "next" button and move on in an attempt to find somebody more interesting.
Chatroulette describes itself as a "brand new service for one-on-one text, webcam and microphone-based chat with people around the world", but no one is sure who started the site. The owners did not respond to an attempt to contact them by email, and they have gone to great pains to protect their identities. This may be because Chatroulette appears to operate largely as an unregulated service and, as a result, has rapidly become a haven for exhibitionists and voyeurs.
A large contingent of people seem intent on using the service's string of random connections as the basis for some sort of sex game.
Users regularly describe unwanted encounters with all sorts of unsavoury characters, and it has become the defining aspect of the site for some. Veteran blogger Jason Kottke, who has spent years documenting some of the web's most weird and wonderful corners, tried the site and then wrote about witnessing nudity, sexual activity and strange behaviour.
"I observed several people drinking malt liquor, two girls making out, many, many guys who disconnected as soon as they saw I wasn't female, [and] several girls who disconnected after seeing my face," he said, adding that he also witnessed "three couples having sex and 11 erect penises".
Yet despite the highly offensive nature of much of the site's content, Kottke – like thousands of others – has been hypnotised by the glimpses the site offers into other people's lives. "Chatroulette is pretty much the best site going on the internet right now," he wrote.
Although the site says that it "does not tolerate broadcasting obscene, offending, pornographic material" and offers users the option to report unsuitable content, the restrictions do not seem to prevent users from broadcasting explicit videos of themselves online.
However, like the chatroom explosion in the late 1990s or the early days of YouTube, spending time inside Chatroulette is becoming a peculiarly modern form of entertainment, particularly popular with students in campuses around the world. In just a couple of months the site has expanded significantly as it tears through universities by word of mouth, spreading virally in a similar manner to sites such as Facebook. This has catapulted the site up the charts and brought it increasing amounts of attention from bloggers. The site had just a handful of visitors at launch, but now boasts more than 10,000 concurrent users at any one time – often rising to 16,000 and beyond.
One chatter, who identified himself as Dan from Philadelphia, said that he had been using the site since very early on and that it was largely populated by people looking for any kind of instant amusement. "Everybody wants to be entertained," he said.
He said he regularly goes on the site with a group of friends to hold "Chatroulette dance parties" – playing records and dancing in front of the camera in an attempt to bring a smile to the face of any passing visitor.
Although Chatroulette takes the idea of random connections between people to extremes, its raison d'être is not entirely new. Internet chatrooms have been around for a generation, while an explosion of webcam sites emerged in the late 1990s. Meanwhile, millions of people use video chat services such as Skype every day to talk to their friends and families, and YouTube – which was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65bn – is among the biggest sites on the web.
There are also a number of self-broadcasting services online, including blogTV, Justin.tv and qik.com – though most provide only one-way connections.
With constant campaigns against cyberbullying and abuse on the internet, there are still questions about potential abuses of Chatroulette and its dangers, but the site's rise is creating interest in many quarters.
Among those wanting to chart its development is Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist with Union Square Ventures who has invested in dozens of dotcom companies, including Twitter.
While Wilson says the level of "perversion and sexual innuendo" is sky-high – and does not suggest that anybody puts money into the service – he admits that it taps into something primal about the web.
"The internet is this huge network with over a billion people worldwide on it. Chatroulette feels like a pretty cool way to take a quick trip around that network, meeting people and talking to them."