Chatroulette, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is quite an interesting experience. It’s a site that connects you with other site users all over the globe to chat or (more likely) video chat with, randomly – hence the name CHAT – ROULETTE. As you might imagine, the voyeuristic element has enticed many – a fact that will become all too clear when you hit “New Game” and are met with the image of some guy who in the words of Estelle Costanza is “treating his body like an amusement park” in the “partner” camera view. And as a result, it’s become something of an internet darling, despite the fact that traditional one-on-one chat applications haven’t been in vogue since about 1998.

I recently tried the service for myself at a friends apartment. And while the attempt was, unfortunately, less interesting than I had hoped, each experience on this thing is unique – since each time you’ll almost undoubtedly encounter more than one user while you’re “playing” Chatroulette. So the best advice I can give you if you want to test the waters (besides ensuring that no children’s virgin eyes are around you while you do it) is just to do it. The problem I had was, my buddy’s laptop was maybe four or five years old, didn’t have a built-in webcam, and may or may not have had a built-in microphone. So every time we hit “Next” we either got a blank screen or someone we couldn’t communicate with, which really takes all the fun out of it. We did break out the Batman mask and get into the freaky spirit a little bit. But we weren’t really able to have any what I might call “significant” chat opportunities while messing around on Chatroulette.

Anyways, one of the most exciting parts about the service (to most who use it, anyawy) is that it’s totally anonymous. Once you hit “New Game” and are linked up to chat with someone, you don’t know them, they don’t know you, and most importantly neither of you knows where the other is, unless of course you ask. But as with almost all internet darling applications these days, someone has now managed to potentially take some of the fun out of Chatroulette, though I’d argue their creation actually makes the service more fun.

Chatroulette Map is a stand alone website that uses Chatroulette users’ IP addresses to pinpoint their locations around the world. It then plots these IP points onto a Google Maps API and provides a screenshot to go along with each. So now, users who visit Chatroulette Map can click on the little plot points to reveal which Chatroulette user is at which location across the country and the world (see screen shot below this post’s title).

Of course, this doesn’t let you see where the person you’re talking to on Chatroulette is; it’s just kind of an index of which Chatroulette users are where. So you’re not likely to be find a person you’re physically conversing with at the moment on Chatroulette Map. But it is interesting to see who comes from where, and which state and/or country has the most “active” Chatroulette user base (as well as which has the dirtiest).

Anyways, should you be so bold as to cruise over to Chatroulette Map, just beware – they try to screen for exposed appendages, but like any system, it’s imperfect and not out of the question that you won’t see something “not suitable for minors” as the site’s disclaimer puts it…

So maybe you won’t be entirely anonymous now when you log on to Chatroulette, but it’s no less worth trying. Just remember, the Chatroulette Maps folks can see you, and potentially the rest of the universe. So, basically, just make sure your face is hidden while you’re touching yourself suggestively on camera.

Oh, and by the way, my Chatroulette adventures have not ended…they’ve just been postponed until I can use my own laptop to actually view the debauchery effectively.

So stay tuned for more…