One on One: Andrey Ternovskiy, Creator of Chatroulette By NICK BILTON Nick Bilton/The New York Times Andrey Ternovskiy, the effervescent and inquisitive 17-year-old founder of Chatroulette. Andrey Ternovskiy, a polite, excited and eager Russian high school student, scoured the Internet trying to find a Web site that allowed random video chats with strangers. When he realized a site like that didn’t exist, he decided to build it. Three months and tens of millions of users later, the 17-year-old is wandering around New York City and (soon) San Francisco talking to investors and programmers about where to take his project next. David Gallagher, deputy tech editor, and I sat down with Mr. Ternovskiy to hear his captivating story about being too young to receive payment for the Google ads he was running and why so many investors want to be his new best friend. Here is an edited and condensed version of our chat: Why did you start Chatroulette? I was looking for a site like this, one that would let me chat randomly on webcams, and I couldn’t find it, so I thought I would try to build it. How long did it take to build? It took me three days. I built it on an old computer I had in my bedroom. Then what happened? Well, at first I showed it to my friends and they criticized it; they asked why anyone would want to use it. So I went onto a few Web forums and asked people to try the site, and I got 20 people to try it. How many users do you have now? Well, after the initial 20 users the site doubled and it continued to double every day since then. Last month I saw 30 million unique visitors come to the Web site and one million new people visit each day. It continues to multiply and I just couldn’t stop it from growing. What were you thinking while this was happening? I woke up one morning and checked my computer and saw all of these news articles about Chatroulette. I yelled to Mom to come and look at my computer. At first she was very nervous, but she doesn’t really understand it very well and asked me why I’m not going to school. What do you think about all the press? Actually I haven’t read a single article. I don’t want to read them. I see a wall of text and I just look at the picture and click next. And what did you parents say? Well, my mother is a bit conservative about it, and I am still in high school. Where does the name come from? I came up with it after I watched a movie about American soldiers who were fighting in Vietnam and were captured and forced to play Russian roulette. Are you making money from the advertisements on the site? I used to be, but for the last six days I have had no ads. But you have Google AdWords, right? Well, Google never sent me the money. Huh? Why didn’t they send you the money? Well, at first it took two months to verify my address in Moscow because I wrote a code down incorrectly. Then, when that was fixed, and everything should’ve been fine, I received a letter from Google that said they could not send me the money because I was not 18 years old yet. What do you plan to do about all the naked people on Chatroulette? People that are naked are all over the Internet. I don’t like it, because I want a clean site, so I have added a “Report” button. Now if someone is reported three times they are banned from the site. How do you feel about Chatroulette Map? I enjoy it. I was e-mailing the creator of the site, but he won’t tell me who it is. There is a certain level of anonymity on the Chatroulette that Chatroulette Map takes away, but I plan to add something to my site to allow them to still hide their whereabouts. So you have been meeting with investors? Well, for now, they are more interested in me, than I am in then. Are people trying to buy the service? I get calls all the time where people say they want to buy my site, but I think that some of them are not serious, they are only offering me $1 million. Will you sell it? Six months ago I would have said yes, but now I want to keep it, I don’t want to sell it. Do you want investors? I’m not sure. There are a lot of business people that are interested. I am afraid to take the offers as I don’t have a business plan. If I take the money I’m responsible for delivering on that. Right now I can survive without investors. The site uses peer-to-peer technology and my Web site is not the kind of site that needs a lot of money to run. So if someone came along to you today and said I’ll give you $5 million for the Web site, would you sell it to them? I’m not sure, to be honest. The thing is, I could take the money, but what if it won’t work well in the future? I would blame myself. I don’t want to disappoint people. Have you always wanted to be a programmer? No, actually I had no interest in being a programmer. I was always interested in language, I studied English and Chinese and I hoped to be a translator. Then I got a computer and saw that you could write code, so I decided to try it. What’s next for you and Chatroulette? I’m looking for ideas, I personally don’t know, but I’m debating changing everything. I’m meeting with people in New York and San Francisco to look for ideas and see what to do next. Who knows what will happen next. And when do you go back to Moscow? I have a ticket to go back in mid-April. But who knows, maybe I’ll never go back! If you need any more details of the above news and/or products, please visit Chinatungsten Online, or contact us directly. Disclaimer: The article is only reflecting the opinions of the author. We have no responsibility to prove the originality and authenticity of the content, words and/or pictures. You readers should just take it as reference and check the details by yourselves. 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RandomDorm: Chatroulette for the College Set

RandomDorm: Chatroulette for the College Set

By JENNA WORTHAM Colleted by http://www.f2f.com.cn

Taking a dizzying spin through the video chat service Chatroulette can be highly entertaining — you might stumble onto a celebrity or an impromptu performance by a pianist.

But there’s always the chance of encountering something unsavory on the service, which randomly matches strangers for video interaction.

One entrepreneur is hoping to limit the chances of that — at least for the collegiate set — with a new Web site called RandomDorm.

RandomDorm takes the thrilling serendipity of being paired with an anonymous stranger in a video chat room and limits it to college campuses. Participants need a college e-mail address to access the Web service. Alternatively, they can sign in using Facebook as long as the primary e-mail address tied to that account ends with an .edu.

Tying the users to a specific identity will in theory make them more accountable, although it’s unclear whether RandomDorm’s limited pool will increase the chances of seeing someone chugging beers online or performing more extreme college antics.

“The good thing about Chatroulette is that it has a low barrier to entry. Anyone can hop on and be instantly connected to someone in the world,” said Josh Weinstein, creator of RandomDorm. “We hope to emulate that simplicity and ensure a degree of community and security.”

For now RandomDorm is limited to students at schools in the United States, but in the future, the company hopes to open it up to international universities, as long as there is demand.

According to recent findings released by the research firm comScore, the demand might be stronger than he thinks: Male college students were the most avid users of Chatroulette.

This isn’t the first time Mr. Weinstein has created a service with students in mind. He’s also the creator of GoodCrush, a college matchmaking service housed at the Manhattan branch of the Polaris Ventures-backed incubator Dogpatch Labs.

Originally, he said, the plan was to add an instant-messaging feature to GoodCrush, but when the company saw how popular Chatroulette was among college students, his team decided to switch gears.

“We put the brakes on text-based chat,” he said. “We realized there’s a real exciting opportunity to actualize our vision of connecting student bodies.”

Chatroulette’s Creator, 17, Introduces Himself

Chatroulette’s Creator, 17, Introduces Himself

By BRAD STONE Collected By www.f2f.com.cn

Andrey Ternovskiy says he created Chatroulette for himself and his friends.

This week my colleagues Jenna Wortham, Nick Bilton and I have been utterly fascinated with, and sometimes repulsed by, a suddenly popular new Web site called Chatroulette.

The site, which gets about 20,000 users on a typical night, generates one-on-one Webcam connections between you and another randomly chosen user. The results are occasionally serendipitous, putting you face to face with an interesting person from another corner of the planet. More often though, the site is reminiscent of those old anything-goes AOL chat rooms, only with video. Let’s put it this way: Parents, keep your children far, far away. The site was well described in a New York magazine article recently and, oddly enough, was featured on “Good Morning America” on Saturday.

The lingering mystery, though, was who was behind the site. The question was answered on Saturday when Andrey Ternovskiy responded to the questions we sent to an e-mail address on Chatroulette. Mr. Ternovskiy said he was a 17-year-old high school student in Moscow.

“I was not sure whether I should tell the world who I am mainly because of the fact that I am under age. Now I think that it would be better to reveal myself,” Mr. Ternovskiy wrote.

I asked Mr. Ternovskiy about the origin of the idea for ChatRoulette, how he manages the technical challenges of running the site, whether he viewed it as a business, and about the way some people were using Chatroulette in, as he put it, “some not very nice ways.” Here are his e-mailed responses, slightly edited and condensed:

I created this project for fun. Initially, I had no business goals with it. I created this project recently. I was and still am a teenager myself, that is why I had a certain feeling of what other teenagers would want to see on the Internet. I myself enjoyed talking to friends with Skype using a microphone and webcam. But we got tired of talking to each other eventually. So I decided to create a little site for me and my friends where we could connect randomly with other people.

It wasn’t so easy to create it for me, but I have been coding since 11 (thanks to my father who introduced me to the Internet early – most of my knowledge comes from it).

I didn’t advertise my site or post it anywhere, but somehow, people started to talk to each other about the site. And the word started to spread. That’s how the simultaneous user count grew from 10 to 50, then from 50 to 100 and so on. Each time the user count grew, I had to rewrite my code completely, because my software and hardware couldn’t handle it all. I never thought that handling the heavy user load would be the most difficult part of my project.

As the user base grew, bandwidth and hosting bills started to show bigger sums. I am glad that my relatives helped me with it by ‘investing’ some money in my idea.

It wasn’t very much money, so I couldn’t just buy new servers just like that, I had to optimize my code as much as possible instead. I must say that lots of people have helped and still are helping me when I have questions about coding. I am very thankful to them. I still code everything myself, though. I’d love to share work with someone else, but I am not in the USA, and most of the interested people are located far away from me, because I live in Moscow. So I still have to do all the things myself. But I am not worried.

I enjoy what I do. It is like a game for me. I discover new things and solve interesting problems.

Right now Chatroulette uses seven high-end servers all located in Frankfurt, Germany. Network throughput is 7 gigabits a second. I use various technologies to minimize bandwidth consumption. But a lot of bandwidth is still consumed. Bandwidth bills show sums which shock me as a teenager, but I am not very worried.

I am glad that people show attention to my project, and there were interesting offers I’ve received that probably might help my project to survive and improve.

Advertising on Chatroulette is kept to a minimum, because there are a lot of sites full of advertisements, which distract you from what you want to do on those sites. I also love minimalism. That’s why I have put only four links on the bottom as advertisements. And what is interesting, is that these advertisements almost cover all expenses, just those four links on the bottom!

I think it’s wonderful that I do not have to put a lot of advertisements on my site to keep it running. I am not sure why it is so. Maybe because Google AdSense (the thing I use to show the advertisements) shows links to various video chats. I don’t think this is a bad thing. I actually think it is a good thing, because only people not interested or tired of using my site click those links, to explore other services.

I am aware that Chatroulette is popular in USA. It is interesting, but I have never been to the USA myself. Yet most of my site users come from it. I would love to visit the United States.

I actually think that it would be best to found Chatroulette as a U.S.-based company. But this is just an idea.

I have always wanted Chatroulette to be an international thing. That’s why I chose Germany for hosting, because it is in the middle between Russia and U.S.A. It is also at the center of various backbone European networks. I think this is a good place for hosting a project which connects people around the world with each other.

However, I am planning to get other servers in other countries soon. With it I will add more interesting and “weird” (in a good sense) features which will make my site even more entertaining.

What is currently stopping me from adding other features which have been suggested by many and have been in my mind is that I am not even sure what Chatroulette is now.

Everyone finds his own way of using the site. Some think it is a game, others think it is a whole unknown world, others think it is a dating service.

I think it’s cool that such a simple concept can be useful for so many people. Although some people are using the site in not very nice ways – I am really against it. Others do really unbelievable things I could never think of. They make up songs about strangers and sing to them, draw them, listen to music, broadcast them their own music. Two groups of teenagers can party together. That’s just great in my opinion. I am glad that I made this project and it is a pleasure for me to work on it.

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