Late Night With Justin.tv, So Meta It Hurts

For the last few days, I’ve been seeing a lot of buzz about Justin.tv, featuring Justin Kan, who going around the Bay Area with a camera mounted to his head streaming online video 24/7. So yesterday I started watching it and became really intrigued (here’s my write-up).

I noticed that they had their cell phone number on the website, so while they were driving around San Francisco yesterday, I sent Justin a text message. Shortly after, as I’m watching the video stream, I see him check his phone and then read the message aloud. That was pretty cool.

So last night, after I got back from the Mooninite Party, I decided to check in with Justin.tv and see what they were up to. Through the stream I saw that they were hanging out at a party on the Peninsula and just as I started to watch, Justin was talking about Laughing Squid. Now that was really strange.

I fired of a text message to him telling him about the odd synchronicity and asked him what they were up to next. He said that they were headed to Bar None in the Marina and invited me to join them. So of course on the way, I posted on Twitter letting people know where they are.

I found them in the crowded bar and they were hanging out with Nick Gonzalez (he broke the story about Justin.tv on TechCrunch) along with a very enthusiastic Justin.tv fan. I shoot some photos.

We talked about a bunch of stuff and all the while I was very conscious that everything I did and said was being streamed online. I assumed that people might be watching and they were. Justine Ezarik was viewing the stream from Pittsburgh and Cris Pearson was tuning in from Melbourne, Australia (he even took some great screenshots of me from the stream using Skitch).

The Justin.tv crew, Justin Kan (CEO/Human Camera), Emmett Shear (software engineer), Kyle Vogt (hardware engineer) and Michael Seibel (COO/producer) are a great group of guys and their hardware setup and technology is quite impressive. I really think they are on to something here. I could see companies sending a person with a camera into events so people could experience it remotely. Then of course there are all the non-commercial applications for a technology like this. The possibilities are endless.

A little later, Phil Kaplan and James Hong showed up. When I first saw them I thought, what a strange coincidence, but then Phil told me that he saw my Twitter notification and they decided to come down and meet up with us. Of course all of this is being streamed, in a very Truman Show kind of way. Mike Doeff took a screenshot of me and Phil from the stream.

So after the bar closed, we all went to get pizza and I was finally able to get a decent photo of all 4 members of the Justin.tv crew. Of course that was streamed as well and Cris Pearson, who is in Australia, got a nice screen grab of me shooting the photos of Justin.tv. Ok that’s so meta it hurts.

We are planning a Justin.tv Drinkup tomorrow night (Sunday, March 25th) in San Francisco. Stay tuned for details.

PS: Props to Supr.c.ilio.us for coming up with the phrase: “So Meta It Hurts”

photos by Scott Beale

screenshots by Mike Doeff and Cris Pearson