Here’s my roundup of feelings and impressions after my first full working week with broadcasting on Justin.tv.

I’ll be including my impressions of the service, how I’m feeling, as well as any technical issues which arise, and workarounds I discover. Feel free to chip in and leave your comments, whether you’re a broadcaster, a viewer, or can’t understand why anyone would want to broadcast their life to the Internet, or watch others.

Talk to the Camera

When engaging with anyone via IRC (Internet Relay Chat) who is watching you, it can be difficult to remember to look at the camera.

At present I’m using the built-in iSight camera on my iMac, so I should remember to look at the little green light that tells me the camera is on. It doesn’t always work, but I’m getting better.

It’s weird

There’s something a little strange, at least to me, about watching someone else’s life, and it’s even odder broadcasting even a portion of your own to a watching world — even if it’s only one or two people at a time.

It is something I’m starting to get used to, though, even after one week. After all, I have a free choice as to whether the camera is on. I don’t pretend to be exciting, or entertaining. This is all an experiment.

Idiots

Any platform where people have free speech with relative anonymity is guaranteed to breed idiots.

Many of the female broadcasters are showered with suggestive, lewd comments, some of which are quite obnoxious. I’m spared a lot of that, but I’m still not immune.

I’ve discovered that there are a number of Internet forums which pick on one channel or another (not just on Justin.tv) to send their members to, for the express and deliberate purpose of disrupting the conversation, and seeing how much they can upset/rile the broadcaster.

They obviously get some kick out of it. It’s always to be expected. Justin.tv has limited tools to ban and ignore such behaviour, though it wastes everyone’s time and energy having to do it.

It’s not much different to dealing with forum and blog spam and personal attacks – it’s just live.

Good relationships

I’m already forming some good relationships with a few broadcasters and viewers, in much the same way as I have done in other ways online (Facebook, email, instant messaging).

Looking forward to week two

I’m going to stick with the experience. Despite some of the negatives, it’s really nice to be able to talk to, and see, other people during the working day, particularly as I work alone at home and don’t often see people.