"My guess is that there's a lot of superficial, but that every once in a while people will strike up a friendship," he said. "That's something that's always valuable and important."
He said people increasingly are forming relationships online, as opposed to only using the Internet to deepen friendships with people they already know.
Conversation shuffle
Still, many of the interactions on Chatroulette could be charitably described as fleeting.
In New York magazine, Sam Anderson wrote that after logging onto the site one day he was rejected immediately by the first 18 people he encountered.
"They appeared, one by one, in a box at the top of my screen -- a young Asian man, a high-school-age girl, a guy lying on his side in bed -- and, every time, I'd feel a little flare of excitement," he wrote.
"It started to feel like a social-anxiety nightmare. One guy just stared into the camera and flipped me off. Another stood in front of his computer making wave motions with his hands, refusing to respond to anything I typed."
When CNN tested the site, one man said he had had a meaningful one-hour conversation through the site. But he said that was "rare" for Chatroulette.
According to reports and a firsthand test, the large majority of the site's users are male and overwhelmingly young. Several reports suggest people in their 30s will be mocked on the site for being "old."
A number of memes have emerged among this young Chatroulette crowd since the site launched. Some users dress in costumes, ostensibly to entertain their chat pairs. Others play music and host dance parties.
Some try to horrify people. One roulette camera that has flashed on computer screens repeatedly shows the image of a man who looks to have hanged himself in the back of a room.
Viability
Whether Chatroulette will be more than just a bizarre blip on the Internet pop-culture radar is still up for debate.
Ostrow, of Mashable, believes advertisers would not want to be associated with the lewdness of the site.
"I think it's certainly an interesting experiment and I can see kind of why it's catching on," he said. "On the other hand, I don't think it's something that is a sustainable business, obviously, when you look at the content that's on there."
Graham Jones, an author who writes about Internet psychology, said the site will fail because it doesn't work with existing social networks.
"I can't imagine that many people will want to use [Chatroulette] for a great length of time, unlike something like Facebook where you're connecting with people you know, or extending relationships with people you know," he said.
A complicated legal environment also surrounds Chatroulette.
Ryan Calo, an attorney and residential fellow at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society, said some activities taking place on the site, such as men masturbating in front of the camera, may be illegal.
But it's hard to say for sure who would be held responsible for any potentially illegal content on the site, and what would be enforced. That's because so many legal jurisdictions could be in play, and because the site chooses video chats randomly, so it may be difficult to prove someone intended to cause harm, or to view illegal images.
"It may raise legal issues for the platform. It may raise them for people that are misusing or abusing the site," he said. "It probably doesn't raise [legal problems] for people who are just going on there to see what's what."
Calo urged Internet users to be cautious about going to Chatroulette.
Parents should keep their kids away from Chatroulette entirely and should restrict their kids' access to webcams in general, said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
"There's clearly illegal content going on on the site. Exhibitionism, exposure of person is unlawful," he said.
Amar Toorwrites on the site Switched that the smut on Chatroulette and the young people on the site may be its undoing.
"All it takes, really, is one creep to link up with one curious 12-year old, and the site will surely be entangled in a fatal lawsuit," Toor writes.
'Unbelievable things'
Some writers have called for Chatroulette to install filters that would let people meet up to talk with people who are interested in certain topics, or who do or do not want to see pornography.
As of yet, the site has few rules. Users are supposed to be at least 16 years old, and they're not supposed to show pornography on the site. A button at the top of the screen lets people flag video chats they find offensive.
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