Chatroulette Moves Forward with Local and Custom Channels

Chatroulette was a huge internet sensation earlier this year and got a lot of cover even from the mainstream media. It’s easy to see why, the video chat site randomly connects two users with the only control over it being the ‘next’ button. The anonymity that it provided was greatly appreciated by some who, let’s just say, are very comfortable with their own bodies, but it didn’t make for much of an experience for everyone else. The site is now rolling out two new features that should help with the problem, Localroulette and Channelroulette.

The new features were introduced earlier this week. Their names are pretty self explanatory, Localroulette brings people from the same country or region together, while Channelroulette enables them to group based on interests.

Initially, users could chose a local channel of their liking, but now they get redirected to the one for their countries, based on their IPs. It works for most countries out there and for places like the US, the channels are further broken down by state, so users from California would be redirected to us-ca.chatroulette.com, for example.

Since there aren’t actually that many people from any given country or region, there’s a very good chance that you’ll be meeting the same people from time to time. The fact that you couldn’t lookup someone you enjoyed talking to previously was one of the main complaints about the site.

The Channelroulette feature enables anyone to create a new channel, which will be registered as a subdomain, something like newchannel.chatroulette.com. This, in theory, should enable people to connect with others with similar interests. It could also serve as a way of creating a private channel of sorts for you and your friends. Of course, anyone is allowed to join any channel, at least for now, so there are no guarantees that you can keep it private.

For now, the most popular channels still revolve around the topics that made the site notorious, but, if Chatroulette continues to add new features that make the experience more pleasurable for most people while retaining its ‘wildness,’ it’s demise may not be such a sure bet as some have been saying.