Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian venture capital firm that has invested $400 million in Facebook, has apparently made an offer to buy a piece of Chatroulette, the webcam network where you can chat with random strangers.

According to Spiegel Online, DST made an offer to 17-year-old Andrey Ternovskiy to buy a piece of his booming website. He has yet to say yes though, as he is traveling to the U.S. to speak with American venture capitalists before taking any investment.

Multiple venture capitalists have apparently expressed interest in Chatroulette, which has more than 1.5 million visitors per day and a reputation for, well, extraordinary amounts of male exhibitionism. Some of the potential investors may include Google, Union Square Ventures and Skype.

Look, we understand why people would want to invest in Chatroulette: It’s hot, it’s fast-growing and it’s taken the web by storm. However, as we argued in an article earlier today, we believe that Chatroulette is unlikely to be the next Twitter — its primary functions are novelty and shock factor, not utility.

Unless Mr. Ternovskiy has a plan to turn the site into a legitimate business (with the male genitalia completely removed), we have a tough time seeing Chatroulette as a smart investment.

Do you agree? Would you invest in Chatroulette? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: business, chatroulete, facebook, social media, twitter

Happy Friday, people! Along with the venerable tradition of Follow Friday, today also marks this week’s edition of the Friday Poll.

Last week we wanted to know if location checkin services freak you out in terms of privacy concerns. Reactions were pretty mixed, although many of you felt like services gave you enough control over permissions and what to make public. Some were concerned about the “digital divide” between early adopters who probably have the experience to know how to use the tools wisely, and the more general public who may end up confronting more privacy issues due to unfamiliarity with these services.

This week there’s another hot topic on the table, thanks to a comment made by Google’s European Director of Online Sales John Herlihy, who said that Google’s focus is squarely on mobile because “in three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.”

We definitely wanted to find out what Mashable readers thought about the future of desktops in light of the push towards mobile: Will desktops still be around? Can these form factors co-exist or will mobile rule the day in short order? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Mashable Answers

Pete Cashmore: Desktops will be a lot less relevant versus laptops and phones. Even for processor-intensive tasks, high-end laptops often suffice.

Ben Parr: No — it will take a lot more time than that. However, you will start seeing app stores replacing traditional purchasing of software in three years.

Josh Catone: “Irrelevant” is a pretty strong word. I don’t know that desktops will ever be irrelevant as long as we continue to use computers. While mainstream users will undoubtedly gravitate toward small, fast, easier-to-use machines like laptops, smart phones, video game consoles, tablets and other connected devices for most of their day-to-day computing, there will likely continue to be a need for desktops in many corporate environments and for resource-intensive tasks (like editing film or rendering computer graphics).

Brenna Ehrlich: No. While it would probably be more cost effective to have one device that caters to your every need, it still remains difficult to both read and write on mobile devices. That all speaks to the permanence of devices such as laptops, but I’m not so sure about desktops.

Matt Silverman: Not completely, but certainly less relevant as we get more processing power into laptops and tablets. If we can do gaming and audio/video production equally as well on a portable computer, then why not?

Christina Warren: No. I think the paradigm will change and that secondary and mobile devices will grow in importance, but no, I don’t see desktops becoming irrelevant in three years.

Tamar Weinberg: Nope. PC gamers will always be reliant on the type of hardware that only desktops offer. Mobile technology will become a lot more prevalent, but as desktops are usually always ahead of the game in terms of feature set and power, desktops will still have a place.

Barb Dybwad: Even mainframes are still around so, no, I don’t think desktops will totally disappear. The rise of netbooks though shows that a lot of people just need “good enough” for a lot of tasks and are willing to trade performance for mobility in lots of use cases. But I agree with Tamar that gamers will still demand the PC hardware experience, and other power-intensive tasks like video-editing and multi-track audio will keep desktops in service for some time even as some users will be doing more of that on laptops and mobile devices too.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ericsphotography

Tags: computing, desktops, future, Google, laptops, lunchtime poll, Mobile 2.0, polls, predictions, smartphones

Each month, our partner Visible Measures compiles a list of the top ten most popular web video series, and we share those results with you and provide analysis. Visible Measures tracks views, comments and other data on web video, and has just made available a free public beta of a tool to benchmark online video ad campaign and content performance.

If you’re looking for some video entertainment to watch on your lunch break, this chart is a great place to start. Find a show you’re interested in and click the play button to the right to check it out.

February’s numbers contain quite an upset — long-time chart-toppers Fred and Happy Tree Friends gave way to a newcomer on the chart: The Annoying Orange. They still hold the #2 and #3 spots, respectively, however. Key of Awesome cracked the chart only recently, but it has already propelled itself to #4 with 300% growth since last month. Impressive!

And if what you’re looking for is a more elaborately produced drama, similar to what you might see on network TV, The Bannen Way, which includes Oscar-nominated actor Michael Lerner, makes an appearance on the chart this month. It’s tied with The Guild in leading Streamy Award nominations this year.

We’ll have more tidbits after the chart below.

The Chart: February 2010

	Rank	Last Month’s Rank	Title	Studio	Genre	True Reach View Count	Change in Views	Sample Episode
	1 NEW The Annoying Orange GagFilms Humor 29,084,220 NEW Play 2 1 Fred NA Comedy 18,619,510 -25% Play 3 2 Happy Tree Friends MondoMedia Animation 15,856,004 -10% Play 4 10 Key of Awesome Next New Networks Comedy, Music 13,659,823 334% Play 5 3 Smosh Deca TV Comedy, Sketch 11,006,254 -16% Play 6 NEW The Bannen Way Crackle Originals Drama 6,576,886 NEW Play 7 4 The Station The Station Comedy 4,325,612 0% Play 8 7 Jake & Amir CollegeHumor Comedy, Sketch 3,307,874 1% Play 9 Back On Chart How it Should Have Ended Starz Media Animation 3,258,431 Back On Chart Play 10 6 Hardly Working CollegeHumor Comedy 3,146,550 -12% Play