San Francisco area start-up Justin.tv are offering thousands the chance to "lifestream", to turn their lives into non-stop daytime TV. The question is: will anybody want to watch?

The first successful lifecaster was JenniCam, where Jennifer Ringley promised to leave her webcam on 24/7 no matter what she was doing.  This earned her some fame and fortune because:

1. She was "a hot chick", as they say
2. She was prepared to show intimacy
3. She was the first to do

That last one is really the important one.  Like every single popular thing online there were many talentless copycats, and no matter how raunchy they promised to get none earned the same acclaim. This is because, and this might shock you, there already is a lot of video sex readily available online. 

None of which Justin.tv will show with a self-imposed PG-13 rating declaring nudity and sex off limits to lifecasters.  That noise you just heard was thousands of possible viewers going "So what’s the bloody point then?"

A bigger problem is the "YouTube paradox": those who most dearly want thousands of people to watch them online aren’t really the sort of person anyone wants to watch. A quick scan of the Justin frontpage shows almost every camera is from the usual "camera on top of desktop in bedroom" angle, also known as the "boring" angle, or the "oh god not another whining nerd" angle.

The technology is allegedly mobile with a small camera that can be fixed to a shoulder strap or elsewhere.  What shoulder strap? Well, the camera must remain connected to a laptop with wireless access at all times.  Which kills any remaining chance of anything interesting ever happening: this isn’t "an exciting glimpse into the lives of active people", it’s "the life of somebody carrying a laptop inside a building, downtown, all day".

It’s clear the owners watched the Truman Show and thought "Hey, we could do that!" The only problems being that

1. Jim Carrey is a professional actor.
2. There was a script.  A script with interesting things happening.
3. There was also an editor.

None of which are skills the average bedroom-bound talking head can bring to bear.  This isn’t the Truman Show – hell, it isn’t even EDTv. 

Think about it: what would your boss tell you if you casually mentioned "By the way, I’d like to broadcast everywhere I am live online 24/7?"  Which means that for better or worse, none of these lifecasters have that kind of problem.  Of course it’s possible that they’re playboy millionaires broadcasting from home for something to do, but I haven’t found Bruce Wayne online yet.

Unemployed, no sex, and confined to a desktop in a bedroom all day. Anybody who wants to watch that online could probably see it in a mirror.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 12:24 pm under Online video.

Read more entries by Luke McKinney.
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