CarnalNation

If you want to meet a random stranger, you can do so online, video and audio included, on Chatroulette! If you don't like who you meet, you can “Next” them as soon as you want and move on to the next randomly selected person. Think of it as a computer blind date crossed with “The Gong Show.”

Sometimes, only a penis makes its appearance.

While there may be sites where that is welcome, Chatroulette! hadn't intended to be one of them. It was started by a Russian teenager, Andrey Ternovskiy, who developed it when he was too young to enter a theater showing movies of some of the things people are showing strangers live using his software.

A study by a team of sociologists at Northwestern University found that your chances are extremely high of seeing a penis (or a lonely guy) within two minutes of logging on to the site. Finding a woman usually requires at least 20 minutes worth of patience. (Research undertaken for this article verified the first two points, and the lack of patience required to determine the third.)

So, to cut down on the “sleaze factor” that is marring its image and intent, Napster founder Shawn Fanning is helping Chatroulette! by designing a penis-recognition algorithm. They are also reported to be working on flagging who gets nexted quickly and frequently as that might be another indicator of those who share what others don't want to see.

There are no reports whether the software will eventually be used to allow penises rather than censor them, but it's obviously another opportunity that the sex industry, one of the few industries to make money online, could make good use of. Maybe Andrey is just waiting until he's old enough to do an adult Chatroulette!