Complete Guide to Chatroulette

Surprising to a lot of people a new page has become extremely popular in just a few months: Chatroulette.com
Nobody thought about this before, and of course everybody now wishes to have this simple and fun idea. Here is a guide of how to use Chatroulette for the new users, so everybody knows its possibilities and potential.

What is Chatroulette?

Chatroulette is a page of random webcam’s conferences and chats. The word roulette applies in its randomness, every-time that you use Chatroulette a random partner with webcam is assigned to you to start chatting, it just uses the function random(); and that’s it, you are communicating with anyone from the planet without any suggestions, tags or criteria.

Is Chatroulette hard to use?

No, au contraire !!!, it is the simplest and easiest to use web in the world.

Lets remember twitter’s success, it was mainly of its simplicity in concept and structure. Well, Chatroulette is even EASIER than twitter.

You don’t need to register, fill a form, put your birth date or even just type a nickname, the system doesn’t care about that, you just need to enter to the page with a webcam in your computer, the flash of the site will auto-detect your camera, microphone and you are ready to go in 3 seconds, just press the button PLAY to start a random video-conference.

Everybody is anonymous in Chatroulette, you are labeled as You and the other contact is just Partner,and in the chat it is labeled as Stranger.

How many persons can chat? ¿Is there an option to have a Multi-conference?

The video-conferences are just between to points of contact, only 2 webcams are present in each communication. But in the other hand in one webcam you can find a group of people wanting to chat with you. It is becoming quite popular to just turon on a laptop ion the middle of a friends meeting to start “Chatrouletting” in the middle of the living-room just to have fun with the randomness of the service.

There is no option of Multi-conferencing.

What if I don’t like the person that Chatroulette assigned to my chat?

This is not a problem, if you don’t like the stranger in the other webcam, you can just press the NEXT button. “Nexting” people within 2 seconds is a very popular action in Chatroulette.

So just press Next.

This is the main option to have fun and to live the Chatroulette experience. One second you can be chatting with a French 18 year-old girl and then you end with a 50 year-old truck driver from Berlin, anything is possible and no-one has any power over the random function.

Sadly at this time there is a high probability that you will end watching a man touching himself, there are a lot of perverts and exhibitionists using the system, but these people will be a minority over time, the community prefers to have fun moments and to make interesting new contacts and friends from all over the world. There is already movements and campaigns to stop the perverts in Chatroulette.

A tip: Don’t forget to check in the option “Auto Reconnect” in the header, this will enable that every-time the other person NEXTs you, the system will automatically set you with a new contact, and you don’t have to move a finger.

Another Tip: If you roll-over the mouse on the video squares new options will appear to adjust the volume, permit or disable the video and audio of each one. The page at first sight might look very simple, but it has a lot of options to customize your preferences.

Which are the requirements to use Chatroulette?

The site asks you to be at least 16 years old and to not transmit any pornographic or controversial material.

Technically Chatroulette only requires a browser that supports the flashplayer plugin, so you are good to use the page from Windows or Mac Os. Users with Linux might have problems with the flash plugin. iPhones are also out of the game for the moment (but probably a special app will appear).

It is not mandatory to have a WebCam, but it it better to have it, a lot of people just press NEXT when a black image and the message of disabled webcam appears at the beginning.

You also need a quite good Internet connection, it has to be able to transmit and receive audio and video.

What if I don’t have a webcam and I don’t want to be a black screen?

There is a solution, you have to cheat the system with a Virtual WebCam, this requires you to install a software in your computer:

• For Macs users, you can use CamCamX (watch the tutorial)
• for PCs / Windows users, I recommend to use WebcamMax (watch the tutorial — post in progress)

These softwares are able to transmit any photo or video from your hard disk in the virtual webcam. Just remember to put the size to 320×240 pixels.

Thanks to this a lot of people transmits FAKE VIDEOS, specially from celebrities. Others upload triple ex fake videos or viral comedy from Youtube.

These is a screenshot is an example of people pretending to be Jonas Brothers or Jessica Alba, look their faces of surprise and joy.

So not everything in Chatroulette is real?

Sadly not. Thanks to the virtual webcams you can end chatting with a fake pre-recorded video of a sexy girl that is sending kisses to you all the time.

To avoid this situation, a lot of people asks you to raise your hand, clap or wave your hand, just to prove that you are real and not a video file.

I have lost contact with a very important person, maybe it was my soulmate! What can I do to find Him / Her again?

If you haven’t asked him / her an email or Facebook account, it is 99% probable that you won’t find this person again, ever. At any given time there are 50,000 people connected to the system and the cost of its randomness is that, the probability to chat two times with the same person is 49,000 to 1. It is easier to win the lotto.

But there is 1% of hope, for these situations a special page was created: Chatroulette Missed Connections.

Many people by mistake press the NEXT button or the browser ends frozen, so lets hope they also know that page.

I have heard that Chatroulette is the Anti-Facebook, why is that?

Do not be afraid, that sentence doesn’t mean that Chatroulette will kill Facebook, it is just said because on Chatroulette, every interaction is an adventurous gamble. There’s no heed to class, race, geography, age, politics or religion. No way to tell who will appear on the other side of the camera.

This stands in contrast to sites like Facebook, Twitter and online dating sites, all of which are organized around existing social networks, creeds, interests or location.

Chatroulette has no fame race either, no need to have a number of friends or followers.

Evrytime you use Chatroulette it will be a unique trip and adventure, no one will have the same experience, like the snowflakes.

It is like quoting Forest Gump just saying: It is like a box of Chocolates, You never know what you’re gonna get.

How was Chatroulette coded

Chatroulette works entirely with flashplayer but it seems to be coded with Flex, you can see the recognizable loading message at the beginning.

In the HTML code there are also some JavaScripts used.

It is a huge advantage for Chatroulette to use Flash, with this the video and audio transmission relays int he client and not in the server.

Who is Chatroulette’s creator?

Believe it or not, Chatroulette was created by a 17 year-old teenager from Moscow – Russia: Andrey Ternovskiy. He will become millionaire very soon, the service increases its popularity exponentially.

Chatroulette was created on November 2009, and in February appeared in CNN, popular blogs, tv shows, and so on. It ranks in Alexa like the page number 5.060 which is really high for a 4-month page. I don’t doubt that it will be as famous as YouTube or twitter.

My post is too long to read?

Well, then enjoy the following 6 minute video: