At midnight on March 19, 2007, a man named Justin Kan put a camera on his baseball cap, hooked it to a laptop in a backpack and started broadcasting his life. He did not plan to stop. Viewers could watch and type into a chat box as he went about his days, dates included. This was Justin.tv, and the website that grew out of it is now better known as Twitch.
The backpack rig came from Kyle Vogt, one of four co-founders along with Kan, Emmett Shear and Michael Seibel. Kan and Shear had already been through one startup. Their calendar app Kiko, which came out in 2005, was beaten by Google Calendar, and they sold it on eBay for $258,000. The new idea was inspired by the rise of YouTube.
Lifecasting gets attention
In plain terms, “lifecasting” meant a stranger’s continuous day, live. It drew press fast: Kan appeared on the Today Show on April 2, 2007, and on Nightline a few days later. It also drew trolls, who called the police on him with false reports and sent big delivery orders to his apartment.
The gimmick did not last the year. Kan stopped broadcasting in 2007, and on October 2 the site opened to anyone who wanted to register and stream. Felicis Ventures and Alsop Louie Partners put up $8 million for the relaunch, and a Jonas Brothers stream pulled in 80,000 viewers. By April 2008, Kan said, 30,000 broadcasting accounts had signed up. Categories multiplied past 60, and by July 2008 there were over a million registered users. Failory puts the 2009 user base at 21 million.
Sports, piracy and a gaming corner
Sports turned out to be the largest driver of visits, especially on weekends and during the NFL season and the NCAA playoffs. That was also a problem. Streaming games without a licence is piracy, and the legal trouble nudged the company toward something safer. Gaming had been one of its listed categories since March 2008. Think of it like a shop that finds most customers crowding one aisle and finally gives that aisle its own storefront.
That happened in June 2011, when the gaming section was spun out as a separate site, Twitch.tv. Justin.tv carried on beside it for a few years. On February 10, 2014, the parent company was rebranded Twitch Interactive, and the Justin.tv service was shut down in August 2014 to leave the company free to focus on Twitch. Amazon acquired Twitch later that same month. Altogether the founders had raised $16.4M.
Sources
- What Happened to Justin.Tv & Why Did They Shut Down? (Failory)
- What Happened to Justin.Tv & Why Did They Shut Down? (Failory), continued
