Do you ever sit around thinking, “Wow, I wish I could turn on my Web cam and talk to a completely random stranger who also has their Web cam on …” Well, today is your lucky day since that is exactly what ChatRoulette is all about.

Created by Andrey Ternovskiy, a 17-year-old high school student in Moscow, ChatRoulette launched in Nov. 2009, and while it got some traffic, it was just this month that the media picked up on it.  Having been featured on Good Morning America and in The New York Times, the site has now grown to tens-of-thousands of visitors at a time.

The concept is a simple one: Turn on your Web cam, click “Start”, and you are soon connected to some other random person from around the world that is on the site at the same time.  Don’t see a person you want to talk to?  Click “Next” and you are immediately sent to the next person in the line.

As I am sure you have guessed by now, the site is quickly filling up with men looking for women, and, yes, you do see a whole lot of … um … “excited men” as you randomly click through the various “strangers”, as the site calls them.  You do, however, also see a lot of very bored looking teens, people just looking for someone to chat with, and occasionally a demon playing a violin.  (I took that screenshot about five minutes before I started writing this)

The site doesn’t require any registration to use, but if you do see something you’d rather not see, you simply click the “Report” button, and if they get enough reports on a user, their computer will be blocked from the site.

While the site is gaining in popularity, there are some definite risks for the younger folks out there, and, well, really anyone who doesn’t want to see that which can not be unseen.  We’re not going to say “Stay Away!  This Way Lies Madness!”, but we are going to suggest you tread cautiously if your curiosity gets the better of you.

(for the record, the violin playing demon wasn’t half bad!)