'chat roulette' as it is now referred, actually worked reasonably well back in around 1997 when Mirabilis built the feature into their ICQ messenger I used the

'chat roulette' as it is now referred, actually worked reasonably well back in around 1997 when Mirabilis built the feature into their ICQ messenger I used the feature quite a bit. I'm sure it eventually got taken over by predators and scammers, but it lasted quite some time. Years before that there was microsoft netmeeting, which was built into windows.. and for some crazy reason it had a phone book listing of all of everyone using the app. You could open the phone book and call anyone anywhere in the world. really it's just all about the balance of well-minded people, and perhaps as the internet grows and the barrier becomes lower for people getting online, the odds end up not working in favor of these sorts of things..