Justin.tv has closed

On August 5, 2014, the Justin.tv website (a YouTube competitor) officially shut down. This happened a few months after rumors appeared about its purchase by Google for $ 1 billion . The site closed without warning, which came as a surprise to the many webcasts that relied on it.

“You know, if they at least somehow warned, we could move to another service without downtime, but no, not everything is done in our time, they announced the closure - and closed on the same day. Asshole, ”programmer Jamie [jwz] Zawinski, who broadcast via Justin.tv webcasts from his DNA Lounge night club, is not shy in expressions.



Justin.tv began operations in 2007 and was a popular platform for online video broadcasts. Each user could open his own “channel” and organize the broadcast. The very first to open his channel on the site was its founder Justin Kan. He broadcast 24 hours a day and promoted the concept of “lifecasting,” that is, broadcasting his life around the clock to a wide audience.

In 2011, Justin Kahn launched the parallel project Twitch.tv for broadcasting game videos and streaming e-sports tournaments. In February 2014, the company was renamed Twitch Interactive. By this time, Twitch became very popular: its monthly audience grew to 45 million people, and the number of broadcast authors - 1 million per month.

Owners of Justin.tv have repeatedly had to deal with broadcast pirated content. Perhaps they decided to concentrate on the game video in order to avoid legal troubles.

On the other hand, the closure of YouTube’s direct competitor is a logical step for Google if it really bought Twitch Interactive (this information has not yet been officially confirmed).

Some videos from Justin.tv site can be restored from the online archive (Internet Archive).

Justin.tv users are advised to switch to another webcasting platform, such as Streamup .