vChatter’s been through a lot since the days of “competitor” ChatRoulette’s glory.  The video chat app rescued us from the random (and quite frightening) chats on the oddly popular ChatRoulette, rising to prominence thanks to its take on privacy, and a penchant for developing an app that’s easy to use.

After a successful Facebook app and subsequent integration with Bebo’s social network, vChatter is ramping up its product offerings with some fresh angel funding.  The $350k round comes from an influential group of angel investors, led by Dave Kennedy.  This brings the total investment for vChatter up to $600k, giving it a healthy dose of start-up funding for what co-founder and CEO Will Bunker aims to do.

vChatter plans to use the funding to significantly build out its development team, speeding up the roll-out schedule for new features around its service.  “I am very excited about getting talented video programmers to push the product forward,” Bunker writes in an email.  “We want to improve the quality of the calls.  Our biggest push the next month or so will be around how do we allow groups of people to interact with each other on Facebook and Bebo.”

The functionality around group chats and improved interaction within social networks is something Bunker and I discussed extensively, just a few short weeks ago.  Improving a user’s options for when and how they conduct a video chat, which could delve into personalized recommendations and likely monetization for vChatter, among other things, is an ambitious goal, but Bunker is a focused leader with experience on his side.

The decision to take in angel funding was a discerning one for Bunker, who was approached by a number of venture capitalists interested in investing with vChatter.  As with Bunker’s early project (which went on to become Match.com), Bunker stayed focused on his goals for the product and its user experience, turning down VC funding in that instance as well.

Bunker offered me some great insight to the world of entrepreneurship and funding once before, so I asked him about maintaining this strong focus around funding efforts. “We had to take a hard look at what our actual needs are and focus the funding efforts to raise that amount,” Bunker says.  “For product development we needed a much smaller amount than VC’s typically invest to reach the next milestone.  Based on that I went back through everyone’s personal network and put together a small group to raise the $350K.”