[8] Done previously founded IT consultancy Simple Machines in Sydney, Australia, and before Chatroulette was CTO for rental platform Goodlord in London.

[10] Ternovskiy says the concept arose from video chats he used to have with friends on Skype, and that he wrote the first version of Chatroulette in "two days and two nights".

[11] He discusses that he did not advertise or post his site anywhere; in fact, people starting talking about the website and knowledge of it gradually spread by word of mouth.

As the number of active users grew, Ternovskiy has had to rewrite the entire code to cope with the load, the management of which is the most challenging part of his project.

[21] One informal study published in March 2010 showed that nearly half of all Chatroulette "spins" connected a user with someone in the US, while the next most likely country was France, with 15%.

[6] Initially, the site only asked users to confirm that they are at least 18 years old and agree on terms to not broadcast any offensive or pornographic content.

This tab also allows users to write an 'about me' section about themselves, including languages they speak and their taste in music, movies, and games.

Emie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, told CBS' The Early Show that the site was the "last place parents want their kids to be.

Some users dress in costumes to entertain the viewer the site pairs them with, while others play music or host dance parties.

[2] In 2011, artists Eva and Franco Mattes presented random Chatroulette users with a staged view of a man who had apparently hanged himself, and recorded the reactions.

[5] In August 2012, Chatroulette removed the Safe Mode feature of the website,[clarification needed] and posted new terms and conditions, stating that nudity was no longer allowed on any part of the site.

Early in the site's operation, an algorithm was developed to successfully filter out large quantities of obscene content on Chatroulette, considering that as much as 30% of the 8.5 million monthly unique visitors are under 18 years of age.

The filter works in a manner that it identifies excessive amounts of revealed skin while simultaneously recognizes faces as appropriate.

[25][26] In an interview, Ternovskiy states, "While recognition software improves, we have employed a moderation team to review pictures manually.

"[25] In December 2020, Chatroulette reported using artificial intelligence company Hive to automatically flag inappropriate content in video streams.