If you're unfamiliar with Chatroulette, it's a site that lets you randomly surf onto someone with a webcam so you can chat and interact with each other. It's a great, innovative concept that took chat boards and instant messaging to a whole new level...

...until the site got inundated by dudes flashing their wangs. A lot of dudes. And a lot of dude-nudity (dudeity?). Leave it to the Internet to ruin a good thing with wieners. The site's been struggling to battle the NSFW issue and figure out a way to regain its initial popularity, and in the meantime traffic has waned considerably. Whether the drop-off was due to people getting tired of seeing a barrage of one-eyed trouser snakes or if the novelty's just worn off remains to be seen.

Speaking of flashing weenis, I always found that to be odd considering Chatroulette users are 89% male. Maybe the trolls got bored with flashing each other considering the likelihood of stumbling across a female (nude or clothed) was slim. That said, The Last Exorcism did a good job of utilizing Chatroulette to scare users and drum up some buzz about the movie. It'd be easy to continue along that vein and use the site as a cheap and easy means of viral promotion. How cool would it be if you logged on and came across an actor who was promoting his/her latest movie and was briefly answering questions about the film?

Chatroulette definitely has a lot of opportunities to become great, but it could be an example of a good idea ruined by some trolls. What are your thoughts, is Chatroulette a flash in the pan or does it have some staying power once they figure out how to make it (somewhat) more SFW?

Does Chatroulette have any staying power?