Justin.tv

Video blogs are very popular today, with gamers and other individuals live streaming videos with newer services like Twitch. Justin.tv was among the first innovators in the field of video streaming. It gave anyone with a camera the chance to share their thoughts with a video, and those watching could segment their video preferences with channels similar to the ones used on YouTube. The first broadcaster on Justin.tv was founder Justin Kan. He initially accounted for the only channel, and Kan helped create life-casting with a 24/7 documentary of his life. Kan's experiment only lasted for a short time before he opened the platform up to other users and permitted each user to stream to an unlimited number of viewers. There was no charge to use the program, and no registration for users was required. Unfortunately, this created some issues for Kan and company. Anonymous users began to use the platform as a host for pirated videos. Porn would also appear from time to time, despite those videos being a violation of the Justin.tv TOS. At its peak, this service had more than 3,000 channels of user-generated content. The majority of people who were posting videos were amateurs and hobbyists in various fields. As such, Justin.tv could at times be a useful source of information when videos were produced well. Poor streaming quality plagued the app from the start. Users were never quite sure which quality they were going to get. The site made claims that users could stream in HD, but at the time no one was creating videos in this format. The average video broadcast on the platform was usually of poor quality. Twitch does a much better job today in this regard. While it did not stand the test of time, Justin.tv will always hold a place in Internet history as a platform that inspired video bloggers and YouTube celebrities like Jake Paul.