Video Runway

Have you ever seen Justin TV? If you haven’t, Justin TV is an online video site that allows anyone with a computer and a webcam to broadcast their life 24/7 if they so choose. It was started a year ago by 23 year old Justin Kan of San Francisco. This week it celebrated it’s first birthday.

Justin TV was born when Justin began wearing a cap with a webcam attached to it, live streaming his life 24/7. Now the site has developed into a place where several thousand people broadcast their lives as well. They each have their own individual channels and they can also chat live with their viewers. There are other video features as well, but what interested me the most was the live streaming.

First I watched as two girls sat in a car staring morosely into space while their live chat friends said such interesting things like: “you look depressed” or “you’re wearing a white shirt.”

Then I watched another channel that showed a college kid in his grungy dorm room listening to music and answering questions from chatters like, “are you in a dorm room?” Or “what’s it like to live in a dorm room?”

Next there was a channel with a live cam at a Manhattan night club. The problem was, it was during the day and all you could see were a dark dance floor and overturned chairs. I guess I should go back at night.

Watching these videos was like watching all the bad French films I had to see in college about unknown people doing boring things while every other shot was a static shot of the sun. Torturous.

Or who knows, maybe I’m just not hip and cool enough to appreciate the fact that all these people feel content to figuratively walk around with cameras on their heads.

Now I have nothing personal against Justin or his TV, but I honestly don’t think YouTube or Hulu have anything to worry about.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 4:00 am and is filed under Online Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.