Justin's my man!

In the 21st century the internet has opened new avenues for individuals who casually use the internet find new ways to broaden their likes especially within entertainment. Music and movies are often very passionate interests by people, and there are numerous sites that allow them to explore and expand their knowledge with them. In class during the presentations I was intrigued by one site in particular that facilitate both of those interests, Justin. TV.

Justin TV is a site that allows people to stream live video that they create and presents a wide variety of other streaming video for users to view. It began with the founder, Justin Kan, streaming live video of his day into episodes or “pod casts” for users to watch, sort of like the movies ED TV or The Truman Show-esque real life show. It is, in my opinion, youtube on steroids. As popularity grew with the group’s project, they added a streaming chat to the video so they could communicate with the viewers and as it showed continued growth, they allowed viewers to become the creators and popularity has continues to multiply.

The site, ran by a group of friends, has a set up like youtube somewhat and has streaming live video’s ranging from movies to people playing video games, random people streaming live video of their days, I watched a video of two girls who were procrastinating painting a room, an African American who was answering peoples questions from his bedroom, and a girl sleeping. I hung out on the site with the girls “Painting” as they talked to people who were commenting on the live chat feed and it was rather amusing. There aren’t too many rules, and the moderator kept the conversations relatively clean. They shared their ideas on gay marriage, where they were going for New Years and other random stuff. After that I went to the movies aspect of the site and watched some of Transformers and Four Christmases and after that I watched some people play a couple of different video games.

Personally, it really engulfed me and my short attention span because, just like other social networking sites, the fact that it is normal people doing activities and talking about stuff I can relate to becomes more interesting and amusing than pretty much anything available at the time. This site has given the power back to the people who made the site what it is today and helps them find a community of other people with related interests. It also is a good way for people to get information out about themselves and anything they have created and are determined to share, sell, etc. This would be, in my opinion, the most diverse online community because it is based on live streaming video with people chatting.