Airtime has been very good at keeping things quiet, with very little information leaking out during its closed alpha test this spring. However, here are a few things we already know ahead of Tuesday’s launch:

• Airtime will allow video chat both with people from your social graph as well as like-minded strangers, and it allows a bit of a blind date atmosphere by offering semi-anonymous interaction. The site’s Terms of Service were recently changed, but before revealed: “Your name is not shared when you are paired with a stranger. However, your Airtime and Facebook friends will be able to directly call you and see when you are online.”
• Airtime ties any  participation to a Facebook account and allow users to block others in order to avoid unwanted nudity.
• The company has been conducting regularly-scheduled trials with participants of the closed alpha test every week. A closer look at the site’s HTML code reveals that people who were lucky enough to get access to the private beta were told to “come back during user test time” after a successful sign-up. At times, access was also throttled, with testers being told that “the site is currently full.”
• Airtime was originally called Supyo. The company has raised a total of $33.5 million in funding over two rounds, with investors including Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel Partners, Google Ventures and a bunch of well-connected including Mike Arrington, Ashton Kutcher, will.i.am and others.
• Clear Channel CEO Bob Pitmann is joining the board of the company, according to All Things Digital.
• Airtime’s artwork has been done by San Francico-based graphic design artist Shyama Golden.
• Airtime acquired social event tracking startup Erly two weeks ago. The deal can best be described as an aqui-hire and brings three Hulu veterans, including the video service’s founding CTO Eric Feng, to the Airtime team.
• The launch event will include appearances by a “a seemingly random group of celebs,” as the New York Post put it Monday. A-listers in attendance will include Snoop Dogg, Kristen Bell, Ed Helms, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Joel McHale, Olivia Munn and Martha Stewart, according to the paper.

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How did a performer, who threw together a costume that he admits is “odd” and “hot” (so much so that it prevented him from making an appearance at Burning Man), jump into such a limelight? He embraced the novel site Chatroulette, which randomly connects video chatters, when it took off, and is now evolving past the site. “It’s not a fertile ground for me anymore.” But he’s still surprised that Chatroulette never took off for other performers at the time, like comedians.

Merton, who doesn’t disclose his real name, said “going viral” on YouTube, was “disorienting and surprising.” In addition he’s said he’s rejected a variety of advertising offers from companies that make food products that he doesn’t eat, but he is interested in working with companies whose products he uses, like Apple or Adobe.

At the end of the day, Merton, seems to solidly know what he wants to do and recognizes how unusual his fame is: “The world doesn’t need 20 hours of Merton, if I put out one good hour,” it could be good.

All it requires is your FaceTime ID, and it’ll connect you with random strangers. Take note of what’s going on here: You’re handing out your email or phone number for public dissemination. It’s probably a good idea to set up a separate account specifically for the purpose if you’re thinking about indulging. Luckily, Holman seems to have your privacy in mind, even if you don’t, so Facelette will render your ID inactive if you stop using it for two minutes. He also plans to purge inactive accounts regularly.

I doubt I’ll be trying this myself, since nothing about the Chatroulette experience seemed that appealing, but judging by the success of the original, something tells me more than a few of you will.

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The chat service, which once placed the video feeds of chat partners on top of each other has now made the video screen of one’s chat partner bigger while de-emphasizing the user’s own video screen. The effect is reminiscent of other video chat services, like Skype or GTalk, which place a smaller window of the user’s video in view rather than alongside their partner’s video feed. Also changed is a big button underneath the video screen, which is no longer labeled “Next” but clearly meant for moving on to the next partner.

pretty much every chatroulette chat ever

But with the relaunch comes the disappearance of some recently launched features. Chatroulette has been experimenting with different takes on its original concept in recent months. The site launched themed channels and local offerings in July, and founder Andrey Ternowsky told us around the same time that he wanted to ditch text chats altogether and instead focus on telepresence. The Localroulette and Channelroulette pages have disappeared, turning up 404s in their place.

Chatroulette has also been stepping up its fight against people who expose themselves on the service. Ternowsky published an open letter on the site in late July, threatening to give the IP addresses of such users to the police. The letter got ridiculed by some, and eventually disappeared from the site, only to be replaced by a generic warning message that Chatroulette was cooperating with law enforcement agencies. However, even this warning was taken off and recently, it seemed like the flashers had returned in droves to the site.

With the relaunch, the perverts that Chatroulette has become famous for have returned, and a quick review of the new site turned up a few members’ members in just a few short minutes. At the same time, there seemed to be a longer lag in between chat sessions, and it’s unclear if that is due to some changes on the back end that might be aimed at surfacing more popular users.

In a discussion at the Technonomy conference earlier this month, Napster co-founder and Chatroulette advisor Sean Parker said the site could work on separating out more interesting and engaging users from those that quickly get “nexted.” By having users who are quickly nexted wait longer in the queue to find a new chat partner, the site could discourage those who are there merely to show off their man parts from participating. It could also possibly help build traffic, by highlighting those who aren’t there for the same purpose.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Report: The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010-2015 (subscription required)

So what’s a bored Chatroulette user gotta do? Look for some group video chat alternatives. Here are a few sites worth a try:

Please note that there’s a high chance to encounter nudity in some form or another on these sites. We don’t recommend frequenting them at work, or at all if you’re under 18.

Shufflepeople is a Chatroulette clone that has been fairly successful in copying the original. It’s currently frequented by more than 4,000 people at a time, if the counter is to be trusted. The site features the ability to report people, but that doesn’t stop the occasional exhibitionist. 18+ only, and definitely NSFW.

Camstumble is also fairly close to the original Chatroulette idea, but the site also offers group chat rooms, including several adult-themed ones, which also makes this 18+ only and NSFW.

Hey-People offers users a few dedicated channels based on their interests, including “small talk,” “dating” and “adult.” Keeping adult conversations apart from regular chats seems like a good idea, and the ability to friend users and reconnect to them at a later date sounds interesting s well. Unfortunately, it looks like hardly anyone is actually using this site. 18+ only, NSFW.

Chatville is a Facebook application that lets you chat with random other Facebook users. You can also invite any of your Facebook friends for a one-on-one chat, and the app makers are apparently working on an integrated video capture feature. However, it doesn’t look like this is used by many users. Safe for work, if it’s working.

Stickam Shuffle is one of the few Chatroulette clones that has been successful at ridding itself of nudity. It can only be used with a Stickam account  and features a bunch of social rewards that make it feel more like a Facebook app than a chatting service at times. Safe for work.

Sites like these can be a fun way to waste a few minutes, but they might also give us an idea of how the next version of Chatroulette will look like. Chatroulette founder Andrey Ternowskiy hasn’t responded to requests for comment this week, but he told NewTeeVee in July that he wanted to completely get rid of text chats and instead embrace a new kind of telepresence, and said that local and topical Chatroulette channels could eventually be the site’s “holy grail.”

Related content on GigaOm Pro (sub req’d): Report: The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010–2015

In a discussion with and Reid Hoffman at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, Parker said that he spends a lot of time thinking about live video. And because “no one’s nailed live video,” Parker believes there’s an opportunity for Chatroulette — which he advises — to differentiate itself with new features that could set it apart from other live video applications.

Parker said live video on platforms like Skype and Facebook “never got figured out,” and other live video startups formed in the mold of YouTube didn’t work either. That kind of startup, which is based on search and discovery, he said, “just leads to a porn app.”

On the other hand, he said, “There was something interesting with Chatroulette, to just throw you into a conversation. There’s no adverse signaling,” Parker said. Even so, there are things the startup could do to create a more engaging experience for users. One thing that Parker suggested Chatroulette could do is move from a one-to-one video chat application to a one-to-many platform.

Parker also said there is an opportunity for the site to surface “more interesting” people to the top, which is one way it could fight its so-called “penis problem.” By increasing the visibility of people who don’t get “nexted” or have other users quickly pass over them, Chatroulette could discourage users from exposing themselves on the service. By highlighting more engaging users, it could also potentially increase traffic on the site.

“Over time the more interesting people would rise to the top and more traffic would be driven to that,” Parker said.

Despite an early meteoric rise as a fascinating Internet phenomenon, Chatroulette has seen its traffic wane in recent months as users are driven away from the preponderance of perverts that have overtaken the site. To deal with this, the site has introduced new specialized channels, in part as a way to help users with common interests — for instance, “SEX” — to more easily find each other. It has also threatened users who expose themselves to minors on the site with police action, blocking and capturing the IP addresses of offenders and sharing them with the police.

With reporting from Katie Fehrenbacher.

Related content on GigaOM Pro: Report: The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010-2015 (subscription required)

The post continues:

“We’ve blocked thousands of IP addresses, reported offenders and service seems to be much cleaner than before. That is cool. Now give us some time to put new features in place.”

Ternovskiy didn’t want to reveal how exactly the site has been collecting information when contacted for this article, but said that “there was no intrusion into existing conversations.”

Chatroulette has long been criticized and mocked for the large number of users who expose themselves on the service. In fact, New York-based filmmaker Casey Neistat once described the site as “71% Boys, 15% Girls, 14% Perverts.” However, it doesn’t seem like Ternovskiy is fundamentally opposed to any nudity on Chatroulette. The site introduced topical channels two weeks ago, and adult-themed channels have consistently been some of the most popular channels available. A new warning on the Chatroulette homepage also seems to suggest that the site is specifically targeting users exposing themselves to minors. It reads:

“Broadcasting inappropriate content to minors is a violation of both US and UN law. We are actively cooperating with law enforcement agencies.”

This is a breaking story, please check back for updates.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Scott Davidson.

Related content on GigaOm Pro (sub req’d): Report: The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010–2015

The site’s new Channelroulette and Localroulette offerings were briefly unavailable yesterday, and are now simply called Local and Channels. Both are based on the same interface, which puts video front and center with a much bigger Flash player, but comes without any text chat. People have been using the text chat option of the original Chatroulette site quite a bit, Ternowsky told me, but he’s determined to get rid of it anyway. “There are lots of text chats out there. Nothing new about it,” he said. Chatroulette on the other hand was trying to create a new kind of telepresence. “It is certainly something awkward and unusual, which is good,” he said.

Part of that awkwardness has been due to the fact that Chatroulette has become popular amongst exhibitionists who want to show off their private parts. Chatroulette’s new Channel system could help to solve this issue by offering themed channels to users interested in adult-themed chats, and thus keeping them away from others. In fact, the sex channel has consistently been the most popular channel, ever since the new offering launched two weeks ago. Ternowsky hopes that the channel model will be the “holy grail” to solve all of the site’s current challenges.

Other challenges include an increasing number of spammers that blast users with fake videos, automated chat messages and banners. Some of them advertise competing offerings while others simply try to get traffic for traditional adult webcam sites. Ternowsky said that spammers are just another technical challenge for the site that would eventually be tackled, and didn’t seem to worried that it will harm its user base. “For users, it’s a part of a game,” he said. “Since it’s a roulette, sometimes you can lose the game.”

Related content on GigaOm Pro (sub req’d): Report: The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010–2015

That shouldn’t stop us from speculating about Chatroulette’s future, which is why we came up with a little weekend poll. We want to know: What do you think Chatroulette needs to succeed? As always, feel free to sound off in the comments!

Related content on GigaOm Pro (sub req’d): Report: The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010–2015

Visitors of Localroulette are automatically routed to local editions of Chatroulette based on their IP address. In our tests conducted in San Francisco, we were sent to a chat channel called us-ca.chatroulette.com, but similar channels also exist for users from Germany, the UK, Russia, Brazil, Denmark and other countries. Earlier this week, users could freely chose between any of these localized channels, but users attempting to enter a channel from a different locale are now automatically rerouted to their local channel.

Another interesting, and perhaps even more important, update allows users to instantly start their own channels by simply adding a subdomain to the Chatroulette Url, e.g. Newteevee.chatroulette.com. (Please note: This link is for demonstration purposes only. We don’t control the content of this channel, which may or may not be safe for work.)

Chatroulette lists the most popular of these custom channels on its website, and the list is currently dominated by sexual-themed channels, which might not be much of a surprise for a site that once was described as “71% Boys, 15% Girls, 14% Perverts.”

In fact, the number of people exposing themselves on Chatroulette has led to a backlash against the site in recent months. Slate writer Mary-Elizabeth Williams even went so far as to declare Chatroulette dead, adding: “Cause of death: penises.”

However, the introduction of local and themed channels could represent an important turning point for Chatroulette. Not only does it allow users interested in sexual experiences to gather amongst themselves, minimizing their, well, let’s just call it “exposure” to other users.

It’s also an intriguing way for users to connect to each other on the site. Anyone can make up a link to a new room and exchange it via IM or online forums, and users meeting on Chatroulette proper can make dates to reconnect to each other in a certain channel.

Chatroulette has seen its traffic dip in recent months, but it’s still attracting a notable audience, with 1.1 million unique users frequenting the site in May, according to Compete.com.

Photo of Chatroulette users courtesy of Flickr user Ricardo Sánchez.

Related content on GigaOm Pro (sub req’d): Report: The Consumer Video Chat Market, 2010–2015