Back in March I wrote a post about Chatroulette, and had a hard time putting my finger on how successful it would be long-term. Keep in mind, that post was in the middle of Chatroulette-mania as the video chat service was skyrocketing in popularity.
However, Chatroulette's popularity topped out that same month, reaching nearly 1.8 million unique visitors in March. Since then, they saw a steady decline to 1.1 million in May, and crept back up to just over 1.3 million visitors in June.
The reason why I'm so intrigued by Chatroulette's ups and downs is that, with the exception of adding channels about a month ago, they haven't made any significant changes to the site. Sure, they brought on Facebook's founding president Sean Parker, but the site itself hasn't really changed.
Even more interesting is the fact that this lack of innovation hasn't stunted Chatroulette's ability to build buzz for other brands. We've seen the Travelocity Roaming Gnome offer travel tips and musician Ben Folds play concerts live on the site.
The latest Chatroulette promotion is for the movie The Last Exorcism. I won't give away any details, but the premise is that otherwise-pleasant chats with a girl take an unexpected turn. There's a video about it in this Mashable article. It's a pretty clever idea, and another great example of companies adopting Chatroulette for promotional purposes.
So can Chatroulette be successful in the long-term? Sure, but it will take some innovating on their part to retain users, rather than continuing to rely on other brands to utilize Chatroulette in its current state. But my guess is that Chatroulette will spend the next year or so hovering right around the 1-1.5 million visitor mark.
That prediction, of course, is under the assumption that Chatroulette stays the way it is now. But if Facebook's founding president is willing to take a gamble on it, then there's a chance Chatroulette could hit the social media jackpot.
