This is a guest post by Robert J. Moore, the CEO and co-founder of RJMetrics, an on-demand database analytics and business intelligence startup. His last guest post was an analysis of Twitter user data.
It’s no surprise that Chatroulette is the latest media darling. It has all the elements of a good story: technology, mystery, celebrity, and sex. If you haven’t heard of Chatroulette, this Daily Show segment is a good primer.
We were itching to study Chatroulette in a RJMetrics Dashboard, but no one seemed to have any good data for us to explore. So, we decided compile the data ourselves by leveraging Chatroulette Map, some scrappy programming, and a passionate tech community. We soon had detailed data on 2,883 Chatroulette sessions that tied users to geography, gender, appearance, and more.
Here are a few highlights from our findings:
- About half of all Chatroulette spins connects you with someone from the USA. The next most likely country is France at 15%.
- Of the spins showing a single person, 89% were male and 11% were female.
- You are more likely to encounter a webcam featuring no person at all than one featuring a solo female.
- 8% of spins showed multiple people behind the camera. 1 in 3 females appear as part of such a group. That number is 1 in 12 for males.
- 1 in 8 spins yield something R-rated (or worse)
- You are twice as likely to encounter a sign requesting female nudity than you are to encounter actual female nudity
How We Did It
Thanks to RJMetrics, the analysis was easy. Getting the data, however, was a bit of a challenge. The good news, however, is that a roulette wheel is the statistician’s best friend. The central limit theorem tells us that a large set of random observations allows us to draw high-confidence conclusions about the underlying data set.
We started our process at Chatroulette Map, an awesome new site that plots screenshots from random Chatroulette sessions on a map.
Chatroulette Map ties Chatters to Locations
It’s a little-known fact that anyone you chat with on Chatroulette can determine your IP address using a program like Wireshark. Chatroulette Map uses this IP data to geolocate and map random chatters on their website (along with still photos from their chats).
Chatroulette Map is also nice enough to expose all of its data points to anyone who clicks “View Source.” Right in the raw source code of their homepage is the image URL, latitude, longitude, city, state, and country of every chatter on their map. As an added bonus, the file name of each image is a UNIX timestamp of when it was taken. Jackpot. (Note: we tried contacting the creators of Chatroulette Map to participate in this story but did not receive a response.)
Once we had photos, times, and locations, we needed data on what was happening in each chat photo. We coded up a quick webpage that displayed a random photo from the data set and asked some basic multiple-choice questions about that photo. These included questions on age, gender, and what the person in the photo was doing. We coded up the backed so that a photo wouldn’t be taken out of rotation until two votes from different IP addresses provided an identical set of answers.
We posted the link to Hacker News on Saturday night. In under two hours, we received 10,770 photo assessments from 1,012 distinct IP addresses. Every photo received a corroborated profile. We had our data.
Five minutes later, the data was loaded into a hosted dashboard on RJMetrics and returning the results you see below.
Caveats
Before we get to the data, we should point out the uncontrolled inputs that could be skewing these results:
- We know nothing about how Chatroulette matches up chatters, and we act on the assumption that pairings are truly random.
- We know nothing about the methodology used by Chatroulette Map. If they excluded data points for any reason or did not sample randomly, our analysis could be skewed.
- Geolocation by IP address is an imperfect science that is typically only accurate within a few dozen miles. It can also be thrown off by users taking advantage of proxy servers or using other techniques to disguise their IP addresses.
- Human image recognition is imperfect (even if mitigated by our vote convergence system). Any images that were judged incorrectly could skew the results.
- It’s also important to note that statistics about “the average chat session” (which we present here) are not the same as stats about “the average user.” For example, imagine if female chats averaged 100 seconds each, but male chats averaged 10 seconds each. Even if there were equal numbers of male and female users, males would enter the pool more often and would therefore appear in front of you more often, making the “average session” more likely to contain a male chat partner. Because of this, all of our statistics are about the average session and not the average user.
The Results
Gender
As you might expect, you’re most likely to encounter a solo male in any given chat session. 72% of our chat sessions were with solo males. Interestingly, 11% showed no person at all while only 9% showed a solo female. So, if you’re looking for women on Chatroulette, be forewarned: you’re more likely to encounter an empty chair.
Most Chat Partners were Male
Also interesting is the prevalence of groups on Chatroulette. In all, 8% of chats featured a group of people (4% all-male, 2% all-female, and 2% mixed). If you include groups, your chance of encountering a female grows to 13%. However, this means that if you do encounter a female, there is about a 1 in 3 chance that she will be part of a group. In contrast, the chance a male will be part of a group is only about 1 in 12.
Age
This analysis excludes cams where age could not be estimated. As you might expect, most people were young adults (about 70%). About 20% were under 20 and about 10% were 40 and older.
Most chat partners are young adults
When we combine age with the gender statistics that we tracked above, we learn even more. For example, females tended to be younger than males, with 23% under 20 (vs. 18% for males). Only 3% of females were over 40 (vs. 8% for males).
Groups of females were even younger. Female-only groups were “Teen or Younger” 65% of the time, while groups of males were “Teens or Younger” only 36% of the time. There were no groups whatsoever of people 40 or older.
Location
47% of the Chatroulette participants measured were from the United States. The most popular countries are shown below:
Most chatters are from the United States
When we combine geography with gender and age, we learn even more:
- Italy had the highest concentration of solo males at 98%. It also had the highest concentration “Men over 40″ at 13% (more than 3x the US rate of 4%).
- The US has the highest concentration of groups at 13%, followed by The Netherlands at 9%.
- Canada had the highest concentration of solo females at 13%, followed by the US at 10%.
Perverts
If you’ve ever used Chatroulette, you probably noticed that not everyone is there just to chat. Some users, which we have affectionately labeled “perverts,” fit into any of these three categories:
- Appear to not be wearing any clothes whatsoever
- Are displaying explicit nudity
- Appear to be committing a lewd act
The overall pervert rate in Chatroulette is 13%. This means about 1 in 8 chat sessions will have something decidedly Rated R (or NC-17) on the other end. Of the perverts that were identified, only 8% were female. Combined with the overall female rate, that means less than 1% of chats feature a female pervert.
Below, we see the “pervert rate” by country:
Chatroulette pervert concentration is the highest in the UK
The United Kingdom dominates the rankings here with a pervert concentration of 22%! Turkey, France, and Germany tie for second place with rates of 15%. Bringing down the global average is the United States, which boasts the lowest pervert concentration of the bunch: 10%.
Also worth mentioning are the users who display signs (like the one below) requesting female nudity.
Signs like this make up between 1% and 2% of all chats. This means that you’re twice as likely to encounter a sign requesting female nudity than you are to encounter actual female nudity.
Validation
In trolling through the thousands of photos collected by Chatroulette Map, I came across this extremely interesting image. It contains a statistical breakdown of what this user saw during his many Chatroulette chat sessions. Sound familiar?
These stats appear to be based on a data set of 1,090 points (pretty impressive for a single user). The numbers are generally in the same ballpark as ours (although we observed a higher pervert rate). We’re not sure who was behind this, but we like their style– they managed to sum up the gist of this blog post in a single image.
Conclusion
Scarcity of the data made this project both challenging and exciting. In an ideal world, it would be great to analyze things like average session length based on different attributes, chat user return rates, cohort analysis, and more. Because of the mostly-anonymous nature of Chatroulette, that data will be hard to come by. For now, at least you have a better idea of what you will see when you hit that Next button.
Guest author Robert J. Moore is the CEO of RJ Metrics, a startup that helps online businesses measure, manage, and monetize better. He was previously a venture capital analyst and currently serves as an advisor to several New York startups. Robert blogs at The Metric System and can be followed on Twitter at @RJMetrics.
Only 13% perverts? Seems low.
My third next was a guy jerking off on cam, so the 13% does seems low. Next time I will read the article first then comments before checking out the website rather than multitasking.
test
test2
“Chatroulette allows you to unleash your inner Internet exhibitionist, with no strings attached”
Just don’t get too excited okay? ..Opinions: http://bit.ly/chatroulette-how-to-use-it-the-right-way
I see biz opp for phone sex operators..
http://www.techwankers.com/2010/03/16/chatroulette-gayfest-business-opp/
on the upside, I only have to click 1000x to run into a few female perverts ;-)
I also believe there statistics are flawed. 13% is low. From my observations, I pressed play and saw some dudes junk, pressed next and saw another dudes junk. Chatroulette makes me question how we made it as far as we did as a society, if man’s best ideas to use a communication service is to show them pleasuring themselves.
waste of time article..
all kidding aside, it’s NOT a waste of time. it’s an analysis of a new technology–what do you come here for?
I wonder whats the percentage of people playing piano: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32vpgNiAH60
Chat Roulette Piano Improv is hilarious!
Thanks Roger, that was funny
The new entertainment medium- on demand no less- ad a rapper, comedian and get rid of the f’g perverts so folks can have a good time.
Imagine if Skype got in the middle of this to offer up scenario- 5 at a time no less
That’s some funny stuff, I’ve a feeling soon there’s gonna be a TV show about Chatroulette, already its very popular on Youtube!
Wow, this dude got talent. He should appear on TV some talent show or pair up with Terry Fator in Las vegas.
I would love to learn some improvisation from this dude. man what was awesome!!!
Hey Roger!
How cute is THAT!!
Thank you for sharing!
lol @ “show me your boobs you will.”
I tried chatroulette for a few days. Here’s my additional observation:
What % of people are racists? As an asian-american it’s very obvious that I’m, well, asian. Yet a surprisingly high % of people, when they first see me, will either “ching chong chang choo!!” or “NI HAO MAH!!!!!” in a very non-flattering way. Typically I will say, “Dude I’m American” at which point they will continue the ridiculous mocking of asian languages and I next them.
I use the term “racist” a little loosely. I actually have stayed on to talk to a few of them and they just turn out to be somewhat “normal” people (college kids) typically from the US. What’s interesting is how the interface of chatroulette seems to allow people to act out in ways they probably wouldn’t do normally in society in open public (sort of like how people are more likely to act out road rage while in a car).
My anecdotal observation too (which may not be too surprising) is that the people in metro areas or those that were going to good schools typically did NOT act this way.
Welcome to the internet sir.
I totally agree, I get ‘white boy’, ‘cracker’ ‘must be racist’ whenever an Asian pops on
Riiiight.
Interestingly I never said white. And, actually, this is also true of the number of latin americans I came across. For them it wasn’t so much “ching chong chang” as it was doing the slanty eyes gesture.
It’s no biggie but I doubt they would do this if they were walking down the street.
So I guess it’s just cam trolling.
Something similar happened to me once at a visitor center in Yosemite. I saw some some adolescents who looked Japanese pretending to speak English. It was clear that they actually only knew a few words. I thought It was hilarious (but they weren’t talking directly to me).
My wife watches a TV program from San Francisco on cable. As soon as it ends a news program in Chinese starts. Inspired by Rosie O’Donnell she calls it the “ching chong” news. Is she racist? Does it make a difference that she is asian?
Peter, i admire your ability not to take it personally. Some people just act boorish when they see something they don’t see very often. Welcome to the internet, indeed.
Well if your wife is Chinese then she must be one of the many culturally whitewashed women there are… willing to insult her own race to fit in with the new (you). That’ll never happen of course, she’ll still get abuse… that’s why she’s with you, to breed some white kids.
I agree. I am an African-American who got called the n word more than one might think on CR. It is interesting to hear people be so hateful on the internet.
American-Asian
There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, and maybe thousands of Asians on the internet who aren’t American. Politically correct is sometimes factually incorrect.
That is just people in general… put a red flag in front of a bull and it’ll go after it… it’s their (whites, latinos, blacks) that asians are inferior to them (the men anyway), a source of ridicule. The negative media, stereotypes surrounding them far exceeds that of whites – of which there is hardly any.
Jeff, you ought to know. Insulting strangers is kind of like waving a red flag. I’m not going to bite, though. My momma taught me never to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed person. Have a good day.
I wasn’t insulting anyone?
If you’re referring to your Asian wife, then yes – she is culturally whitewashed to actually insult her own race. That isn’t an insult.
But I agree, you mustn’t bite either, despite responding. That would be rather low.
You have a nice day too.
Interesting article, and not far from what we’d expect.
However, you failed to mention there is another possibility. There are many “fake webcam” software packages out there that will allow you to take a video and make it your own.
So out of the female users, I’m wondering how many of them that you saw are in fact simply videos and in fact there is a male on that side of the screen.
The “Report” button actually does work (So use it). It puts the user in a 10 min timeout. If there is multiple reports with a short time period the user is blocked for 4 hours.
Its like pouring cold water on breeding dogs. Very effective. I only wish CR would connect all the pervs to each other.
Meme cam… be lulz, be very lulz.
what’s more pointless and depressing than chatroulette? stat porn about chatroulette
Actually, the pervert here is TechCrunch. What seems like a legitimate research about Chatroulette is actually a shameless self promotion of RJMetrics.
Twitter data is what is important, this company needs to focus on Twitter data and they will be golden.
surprised benchmark, DST and Ron Conway haven’t invested in this phenom.
Slightly different #s than we reported last week ( http://answerguy.com/2010/03/11/chatroulette-add-maps-and-caputured-pictures-uh-oh/ ) based on someone else’s anecdotal work, but only slightly.
And the real point remains: With Chatroulettemap now running (again, see above link) , WHO would still be doing this?
Come on ladies, this gender disparity in junk displaying is unacceptable.
But in seriousness, chatroulette is a fascinating phenomenon. It would never exist without the internet, and reveals something profound about the human condition. What it reveals exactly, I’m not sure, but it is brilliant.
thank you post
Does ‘no person’ include the furries ?
Chatroulette has got to be for the most desperate sexually people ever………..! You can’t get on when ANY age children are near for fear some sick dude with a little dick will pop up. Give me a break, that’s what porn is for! SICK FUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!
Interesting that the reported American userbase is 47%, when Alexa.com reports 29.3% (and this is up only a bit after about a month from 25.%, which I reported here: http://www.webecologyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/WEP-chatroulette.pdf). Obviously a sample of 2k isn’t much compared to the overall size of the site, but I wonder if this informs us a bit as to the true randomness of ChatRoulette (eg., perhaps it skews toward IPs closer to home)?
Robert, can you please explain to me how the data form ChatrouletteMap works? I’m quite obsessed with Chatroulette and have spent a few days returning to the map application to view the changing data points – of which there are NONE! It’s merely a static grab from a single point in time.
+1, the Map is not being updated. It’s just being hyped.
Piano improv guy is hilarious.
I think you failed to take into account different timezones for location. Because chatroulette picks a match from around the world, the time in which you collect your data is extremely important. Thus, if you had run your experiment for longer than 2 hours across multiple days, then I’m sure you would get very different responses.
Interesting statistical breakdown, regardless of how unscientific your methodology was.
Great point.
i just saw a chatroulette clone script at http://techcat.org/chatroulette-clone and it seems like everyone wanna do this.
Great stuff! A week-long Chatrt binge session with my roommates a month ago brought on a few ideas of having fun with the service…
(get ready shameless plug)
…so, we came up with a bingo game (http://chatroulettebingo.com/).
Right now, it requires you to print out the board to play, but in the near future we’ll be making it interactive, and when that happens, it’ll keep stats of what’s marked off. Looking forward to comparing those with what you’ve come up with above and what others have released.
Any particular reason why you showed the stats in that screen cap for boobs & vaginas & obscured the stats for penises? Why would you make that number fuzzy? It’s part of the data.
The bias I see in this research is the assumption that most men using it are searching for female nudity. Not all people are heterosexual, you know.
Sorry so many straight guys are disappointed that women aren’t insane enough to drop their clothing for strangers. That seems to be more your thing.
They didn’t make it fuzzy, the original author did. The contrast between the red they chose as the background for penises is less than the yellow they chose for boobs +vaginas. Should have gone with lighter red. Silly random chatrt’er.
thanks for the informtion
I posit that these stats are worthless garbage. These “stats” are merely the statistics of a unique user during a unique timeframe and are useless the moment they are gathered.
The assumption in these numbers is that the chatroulette users are continuous and static. Neither are the case. Internet stats make sense for the chatroulette domain itself or even an “unscientific” internet poll as those items themselves are static. But when you are taking two dymanic connections to random dynamic connections, you need a much more robust stat system then just raw numbers of ONE users experiences.
Sorry wannabe journalists, this endeavor is flawed from the get go and since I’m assuming you folks have no deep understanding of statistics, this concept may still fly over your heads.
Either go back to your day jobs (if you have one) or at least tell us you wanted to justify you curiosity of the site and get paid for it.
Adieu
Christoph is right, we need full scientific controls and the careful hand of a professional statistician if we are ever to unravel something as meaningful as chatroulette… because clearly this is a funded study and not a silly blog post.
The New cleaner Chatroulette is now here Vtring.com
lol, I actually got female nudity by request… twice… by playing a video of a girl stripping to a webcam video. Yes, I twice got lesbians.
That’s a great idea!
Signed,
Auburn-haired, bi-curious teen girl from AOL ’95
British perversion? This is just time-based correlation. The data was taken on a ‘Saturday night’ (US time). So the only people up at that hour in the UK are a bunch of lonely men or people who rolled in late from the pub. Sorry, gotta pop this bubble. This is shitty stats, not great