Five minutes on ChatRoulette can be very revealing – sometimes too revealing.

The former University of Massachusetts students at CampusLIVE have an answer for those who feel that the video chat options currently in existence are a bit too inconsistent (or creepy) for their tastes.

The company has announced its latest development: VideoChat, which launches today on CampusLIVE.com, seeking to connect college students from campuses across the country via a live, online video chat platform.

The CampusLIVE team “has given college students an answer to their problems with ChatRoulette: filtering options that eliminate perverts and increase female usage,” which aim to place the company at the forefront of online chat technology, according to a press release sent yesterday.

“Over time, we will allow students to filter their partners by campus, gender and interests,” said Michael Miklavic, CampusLIVE’s director of product development.

Students will have the choice of limiting their video chat to only UMass students, but can also opt to include the web cams from more than 200 other schools, including Boston College, University of New Hampshire, Northeastern University and Florida State University.

Soon, students will have the ability to swap personal information if they like who they see on the other end of the webcam. Users will have the chance to add those they meet on the VideoChat network to a list of “favorite people,” so that they can connect with them again in the future.

The service will also allow students to pick specific Facebook friends with which to video chat, allowing individuals to talk to one another across campus and around the world. This aims to offer another option for couples and other chatters that, until now, have chosen Skype and similar programs.

“We’d like to offer students an alternative,” said Ryan Durkin, CampusLIVE’s COO, “a place where students can go and meet new people from across campus and throughout the country.”

Founded in the Southwest Residential Area in 2007, CampusLIVE has grown to incorporate nearly 200 colleges across the county, with more than 2 million unique visitors a month on the company’s website.

After raising more than $300,000 of capital in January, the Internet startup is now looking to expand its offerings to students beyond specialized homepages and restaurant menus, and into the territory of established online companies, such as ChatRoulette and eBay’s Skype.

“VideoChat is the first of numerous upcoming developments of which we have been working on in the LIVE communication space,” said Boris Revsin, CampusLIVE’s CEO. “We’ve seen a shift in communication over the past several months in the college demographic. Students are interested in expanding beyond simply using Facebook for all of their social media needs.”

The Massachusetts Daily Collegian and CampusLIVE are currently partnering to bring UMass students the Collegian’s online local dining guide, which launched last week on Dailycollegian.com.

CampusLIVE VideoChat can be found at www.campuslive.com/umass/videochat.

Nick Bush can be reached at [email protected].