Awhile back, I had heard about Justin Kan of justin.tv, especially when tech blogs had picked up complaints about him intentionally disrupting his life cast because he was getting it on.

I recently learned that a guy I worked with in college is also broadcasting via a justin.tv channel/show. From what I’ve seen, the set up looks like Diggnation. That’s when I realized… my god, everyone is life casting it seems! Is it the trendy thing to do now?

I didn’t really have that much of an interest to follow a stranger’s life including witnessing the mundane activities, although I could see the appeal of viewing what happens when people prank him and his office like this one:

And at the Napkin Business Challenge Pitch Night, it was mentioned in passing that Justin.tv was there; it might have been interesting to see the event through “his eyes”.

Just last month, I learned that he was attending the Supernova Conference. I had been hearing about the Supernova Conference from others (and someone asked me if I was going to Supernova when I mentioned I was going to a conference). I was trying to figure out if Supernova was a small conference thrown together by a random person or a large one. Held at the fancy Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, it didn’t surprise me when I later found out that a conference ticket was going for $2000! Holy crap!

Curious about the conference content, for the first time, I tuned into Justin.tv. Or rather, his archives to check out the video feed of his time at Supernova (12:20pm on June 20, 2007) and thisgirlangie is there, too! What I realized was that he hadn’t been life casting for long; I thought he was doing this for at least over a year when he has only been live for 114 days. Following him around was a little interesting in a voyeuristic kind of way I suppose (what draws us into reality TV shows). While some people keep his life cast running in the background all day, I wouldn’t tune in on a regular basis though. I’d rather listen to music during my day. I have to admit though, seeing the life of someone you know could be more interesting.

YouTube’s tagline is “Broadcast Yourself”, but Justin.tv actually truly does that. And other people seem to be jumping on the bandwagon, too; while other ideas like JenniCam had been done, he’s actually turning this endeavor into a business and several people are also life casting on his site now.

From what I’ve read, there’s a possibility that he might broadcast his life for the rest of his life which seems incredibly crazy. But I guess we all have a bit of exhibitionist in us. That’s why Facebook’s news feeds, Twitter, and online journaling (as opposed to blogging) of personal details is so popular; people like to broadcast their lives to anyone who’s willing to pay attention.

1. del Says:
   August 11th, 2007 at 13:08

   I checked this out from your blog… he was on some date with some girl. It wasn’t very exciting. I clicked the X in the box at the top right of my screen. That was oodles more fun.