Travelocity company mascot, The Roaming Gnome, appears to be fronting the first push by a travel company to tap into the mind-boggingly growth and popularity of Chatroulette.
The omnipresent Gnome, which has spearheaded Travelocity's marketing since 2004 and has a presence on Facebook and Twitter, is now also popping up on the general feed for Chatroulette.
For the uninitiated, Chatroulette is a primarily video-based website that pairs random users together via their webcams, allowing them to meet other people around the world for a chat before moving on to another random user.
The growth of the service - from 500 users shortly after launch in November 2009 to around 1.5 million in early-March 2010, according to its 17-year-old Russian creator Andrey Ternovskiy - is being fuelled by the inevitable coverage in the tech press but also from high profile users such as Kelly Osbourne, Joel Madden, Nicole Richie and Perez Hilton.
The Roaming Gnome appears on the random feed with a number of messages to fellow users.
Travelocity officials say Gnome's addition is purely an experiment but could eventually be part of its wider social media strategy, especially as the mascot has over 50,000 fans on Facebook and 8,500 followers on Twitter.
With a fair degree of tongue-in-cheek, spokesman Joel Frey says:
"He’s there because the users of Chatroulette need travel in their lives more than anyone else, and only he can help them make it happen.
"This is a great opportunity for the Gnome to shake these unfortunate under-traveled souls out of their ‘next, click, next, click, next’ mindset and think about what else they could be doing with their time that would be better than staying in, alone at home."