Justin.tv
Justin.tv was a website created by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt in 2007 to allow anyone to broadcast video online. Justin.tv user accounts were called "channels", like those on YouTube, and users were encouraged to broadcast a wide variety of user-generated live video content, called "broadcasts".
| Available in | Various |
|---|---|
| Dissolved | August 5, 2014 |
| Successor(s) | Twitch |
| Owner | Twitch Interactive (called Justin.tv, Inc until February 2014) |
| URL | www |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | March 19, 2007 |
| Current status | Defunct |
The company was an Internet startup based in San Francisco, California, with seed funding from Paul Graham of seed capital firm Y Combinator and Series A funding with Alsop Louie Partners and Draper Associates.
The original Justin.tv was a single channel featuring founder Justin Kan, who broadcast his life 24/7 and popularized the term lifecasting. In 2007, Justin Kan stopped broadcasting and Justin.tv relaunched into its later form as a network of thousands of channels.
Users were permitted to broadcast to an unlimited number of people for free, and watching broadcasts did not require user registration. Broadcasts that were considered to contain potentially offensive content were available only to registered users over the age of 18. Broadcasts containing defamation, pornography or copyright violations, or encouraging criminal conduct, were prohibited by Justin.tv's terms of service.
Justin.tv moved its gaming section to a new site called Twitch.tv in June 2011, and the parent company of Twitch.tv and Justin.tv rebranded as Twitch Interactive in February 2014. The Justin.tv services and brand were officially shut down in August 2014 so that the company could focus on Twitch, which was then acquired by Amazon later that month.