So this is actually the site that started it all. Way back on March 25th, 2008, an 18-year-old high school student by the name of Leif K-Brooks founded Omegle, the first (as far as I am aware) true random roulette chat site. No, Chatroulette was NOT first, Omegle was. Many people either don’t know this or simply don’t give Omegle the credit it deserves, so we’ll give it plenty of credit right now! However, the site did not start with a video option, it was strictly text-only, so Chatroulette actually does deserve a lot of credit as well for making the progression to webcams. Similar to Chatroulette, Omegle did actually receive quite a bit of press coverage, and it subsequently went viral, propelling it to huge popularity. However, it didn’t receive attention on the same level as Chatroulette because the addition of video really made a major difference, and, when Omegle added a video option of its own it became more popular than it ever was at any point before – so the emergence of the video roulette functionality really benefited it despite the fact that it had new competition. As of right now, Omegle has not only caught up to Chatroulette, but surpassed it in terms of visitors! Crazy!

So, you might wonder, how is it that Omegle is now beating out the first random live video chat site who garnered all the biggest headlines? Quite frankly, it has more to offer. On top of the normal webcam roulette option, Omegle adds in a text-only option. Then, they take things another step further by allowing users to specify their interests and be connected to someone else with similar interests. This is huge! Rather than having to sift through countless users to find the person who is willing to chat with you about World of Warcraft you can now just type in World of Warcraft and find a match right away. You can brag about your character and possibly get a sweet reaction to boost your ego, hurray! But hold on, the features aren’t done yet. Omegle has yet another sweet option called “spy mode” where you can pose a question and then “spy” on two people as they argue about it! The more ridiculous a question you pose, the more awesome and entertaining the ensuing debate. It’s mad cool. Give them a visit at www.omegle.com.