Chatroulette creator interviewed by NYT
You know you’ve made it when the New York Times wants to interview you. Then again, I guess you know you’ve made it when the Web site you created is getting 30 million hits a month and is being talked about around the world. Meet Andrey Ternovskiy, the creator of Chatroulette.
Chatroulette works due to its simplicity: connecting two strangers via Webcam until they decide they’ve had enough and click Next. And it’s changed the life of the 17-year-old Russian kid behind the site, possibly forever.
Ternovskiy tells the NYT that it took him three days to build the site from scratch, how he named it after seeing the game of Russian Roulette in The Deer Hunter, and how traffic has doubled every day since the site went live.
He also states that he’s yet to make a cent from the site as Google is refusing to send him a check for his AdWords revenue. He needs to wait until he turns 18. But interestingly, he’s not sure whether he now wants to sell the site, or even accept any of the investment opportunities that are bound to be coming his way.
As for the future of the site: he’d like to see the naked people gone (hence the new Report button) and is working on a way of restoring people’s anonymity. That having been lost thanks to Chatroulette Map and similar efforts.
The full interview is well worth a read.
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