The Mosaic Blog

After grabbing my coffee on Friday morning a couple weeks ago, my coworker Jenn stopped by my desk and told me about this “hilarious” website that I just had to check out. That fateful day marked my introduction to Chatroulette (FYI, that link is possibly NSFW). The concept is simple: the site randomly connects users through one-on-one videochat with strangers around the world. If you aren’t interested in chatting with who you are matched up with, you can “Next” them and be matched up with someone else. (This video is a great introduction, despite the occasional F-bomb.) Created in November 2009 by 17 year…

…old Andrey Ternovskiy of Moscow, the site has exploded in popularity via word of mouth and is garnering lots of attention – and not only from the media. One of the web’s best known investors, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, says he want to invite Andrey to New York for a chat: “I think we’ll reach out to Andrey and offer him a visit to NYC. I’m still not sure if this is something we should invest it, but I’d sure like to meet this guy. He reminds me of many great young entrepreneurs we’ve worked with and his story sounds so familiar.” The site has become so popular, celebs including Nicole Ritchie and Perez Hilton are talking about it, and a Missed Connections section has been even added.
Unsurprisingly, the reactions to the site have been mixed, from hailing Chatroulette as “a refreshing return to the days of the IRC and old-school AOL chat rooms” to “the go to site if you want to chat with the most socially depraved people you will ever interact with” to “the cocaine of social networking”. Regardless of your opinion, it’s definitely something you’ll hear about over the next few months. (Parents, feel free to go ahead and change those SafeSearch setting now.)