Hanging out with justin

Wednesday I had lunch with Justin of justin.tv where I asked him a load of questions. The audio is not that good, and my camera died early on, but in case anyone’s interested, here’s a short movie:

Since he was going to spend some time with the Reddit guys on Friday, I invited him to stop by Jumpcut (we’re in the same building) where he randomly bumped into some justintv fans.

Though the company is in its early stages, he said that the plan was to find high profile people interested in wearing the camera. If they’re looking to market to celebrities, though, they really need to start getting attention from the Hollywood types more than the geek types. There is also a lot of financial potential in product placement.

Instead of giving cameras to select people I’d like to see these babies mass-produced from the get-go and let the viewers decide who they want to watch. I imagine justintv as a service where camera-owners can have their own ‘producer page’ and viewers can add them and create lists of preferred shows. It would be amusing to see multiple streams at the same time, especially if the camera-wearers are in the same location. A jumpcut tie-in would allow users to edit the videos of the people they watch. I have no authority to speculate on what their business plan is (or Jumpcut’s) — I just think that this would be cool. Watching a politian or an actor would be fascinating, but I like the idea of giving the technology to everybody at the same time.

Advertising is potentially a large source of income. They already have a product placement deal with Bawls. I have no interest in energy drinks, and yet I remember the company’s name, product, and bottle design (cobalt glass with dots all over it). Advertising: it helps me decide.

Justin updates his blog daily with video links to the highlights. Here’s the entry for Wednesday:

When Justin stopped by the Jumpcut office, I had stepped out for a second. When I returned, I didn’t see him. Instead of calling or texting him, I headed straight to my computer. Watching the stream, I realized that he was inside our breakroom. As I walked back in that direction, a few people from a conference room ran up to him, exclaiming, “You’re Justin!”. It turns out some yahoo types were watching the site when they realized he was in the office. Justin is quickly becoming an internet celebrity — they all wanted to take pictures with him. It was pretty much the cutest thing ever.

Even though Justin says that the camera does not change his behavior, when I mentioned the story of the two models making out in our building, he asked about their gender because ‘the viewers would want to know that’. Of course this brings me back to one of my favorite topics to think about — the definition of self and how online presence shapes that.

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