There’s been a lot of talk about whether Chat Roulette is on its way out — There has been a large drop in traffic due to too many predators out there. Well, good news, Merton to the rescue! — it appears that Merton, the Chatroulette Piano Guy, is back (again).

That’s right, the hooded mystery — who kinda looks like Ben Folds — has posted a new video to his YouTube channel. Still, despite the fact that this dude released his vid on the Friday before a holiday weekend, it has already racked up more than 350k views which is not too shabbs for someone whose last YouTube offering came out three months ago.

Curiously, however, Merton made use of Omegle this time around. For those of you who are not sure what Omegle is, its basically Chatroulette’s older and less famous sister. It used to be a text-only chat service, but recently added video into the mix (it had to), to compete with its saucy younger brother. What does this mean for “The Chatroulette phenomenon”? Is he forsaking his roots, or jsut simply branching out?

Check out Merton’s vid — he’s getting very creative. Let us know what you think: Is Chatroulette’s future looking better? Will you switch to Omegle? Does Merton have any hair under that hood? Is he on steroids? Please give us your feedback. Enjoy:

When Merton the Chatroulette Piano Guy joined the community last month, a large amount of people believed him to be musician Ben Folds from Ben Folds Five. Folds, in turn, started imitating Merton at concerts, uploading his “Odes to Merton” onto YouTube himself. Mashable recently sat down with Ben Folds via Skype to talk about Merton, Chat Roulette and whether he is, in fact, the man behind the mysterious hood.

After hearing this interview with Folds, I’m pretty sure that he and Merton are not the same person. Check out the interview below if you’re still not convinced, check out another interview I’m posting below also from mashable but with Merton himself.