

YC Startup Justin.tv hits Alexa 160 - justin
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/justin.tv
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/justin.tv
======
justin
We're also hiring:

Ruby engineers: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=312684> Python engineers:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=312675>

~~~
foobar2k
I'd not checked out justin.tv since Justin's 24h lifestreaming event ended,
but the other day I was round my brother's house (my brother is a non-techy
person) and we were talking about the US Open tennis and where we should go to
watch it.

"Oh I know this great site which has all the sports" he says as he loads up
Justin.tv.

So basically justin.tv has loads of traffic because it is the hub of illegal
sports rebroadcasting.

I think the site is great though, so I hope after all the copyright lawyers
break down your doors and you are forced to go back to "legitimate" streams
only, that your growth is still strong.

~~~
wensing
This happened to me too when I discovered a relative watching Major League
Soccer and then noticed justin.tv in the address bar.

I asked him what "PSN" (the logo plastered all over the channel) was all
about, and when he didn't know I had to conclude that either: 1) it was
illegal or 2) PSN was somehow paying ESPN to re-broadcast MLS games.

I guess I was wrong in believing it was #2?

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cmos
Please forgive me for being a bit out of it. But I write this as my ignorance
might be helpful insight.

I thought justin.tv was this site that tracked a guy named Justin 24/7. I
seemed to recall him having a camera crew with him all the time, and that was
the shtick. I had heard about them from the early days of this group, and I
think had read about the camera crew and such on some web site.

So when I saw this post, I read through the comments and was confused about
the "stop worrying about copyright law" statement.

I decided to check it out.

Now, looking at the front page, it seemed like either I was completely
mistaking justin.tv for another web site, or it has changed it's goals, or the
'follow justin around' was a publicity ploy to get attention, and that indeed
could be one of the 'channels' I see on the front page ("create your own
channel"). (if the latter is actually correct, kudos to a great ploy as the
name stood out to me)

Either way, I still didn't really 'get it' from the front page. It looked
cool, and I was able to surmise what was going on from all the activity (there
was a video of someone playing doom) that it was about video sharing.

I finally found the 'about us' section which turns out to be brief bio's of
the founders and key employees. And there was a guy named Justin who looked
like he might have been the guy who had the 24 hour camera crew with him. But
his Bio didn't refer to this.

So perhaps I was imagining the whole thing. That's cool. I've done it before.

But if not, and the 'follow justin' thing really happened, then at least
mention it somewhere so a out of touch lad like me doesn't check himself in
somewhere.

But I still don't know what makes justin.tv special. It's description is
"Justin.tv is the leader in live video and the place to broadcast and share
video online." I thought that's what youtube was.

So it justin.tv the more hip version of youtube? Or, as I think about this
more, is it the word LIVE that separates it from youtube? Are all the feeds
'live'? Like in real time? If so, that should get a bit more attention than
some text at the bottom of the page.

And so as I review the front page, indeed it looks as though the video on the
top could be live.

And the video on the bottom are highlights. Aha. Previous recordings.

Ok. Now I get it. That's pretty cool. How about we rewrite the description to
be "Justin.tv streams LIVE video.".

But seriously, it took me a while. Live streams should have an icon in the
bottom right that say "LIVE!" that doesn't get into the recording.

The concept of 'time' should be more involved in the navigation + searching.
The front page should be like TV guide, and I can click on a row, at the
'current time', and see a live recording of that channel. As it plays the TV
guide scrolls to the left slowly to mark the passing of time. The length of a
show is depicted with width, and I can click anywhere to see the past. And
since it's realtime let me sort the channel rows by poularity, ratings etc.

Sorry to be out of it. I'm a little surprised it took me so long to get the
'live' part.

~~~
stupiduser
Youtube doesn't do live video whatsoever. And yes, Justin was the guy with the
camera strapped to his head 24/7. If a site doesn't make its history clear,
you can usually check out wikipedia.

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alex_c
Congrats guys!

It looks like traffic really started to pick up around March. Did anything
drastic happen around then?

~~~
norman
I think that's when they stopped worrying about copyright law and letting
people re-broadcast telelvision.

~~~
colinplamondon
Worked for YouTube.

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tlrobinson
Anything in particular the recent spike in traffic can be attributed to?

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jacobbijani
alexa being total garbage

~~~
emmett
Indeed. Our growth doesn't have a big spike at the end, it's just gradually
doubling up every month or so.

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jbyers
Any comment on the nature of what looks like a very large recent traffic spike
(at least, per Alexa's graph)? What's being watched, who's watching it, any
triggering events?

~~~
emmett
Our traffic is spiky, but not as much as the Alexa graph suggests. In reality
our growth is much more steady; every now and then Alexa seems to "catch up".
It's weird, and we're not sure what would cause that effect.

~~~
nickb
How close are Alexa traffic estimates to the actual traffic volumes? I've
heard from numerous people that Alexa is almost always wrong and wrong by
several orders of magnitude. It could be better for big sites, not sure. Just
wondering what you guys see..

~~~
emmett
Alexa's numbers are crap. Total crap. They only reflect your traffic in the
loosest way. There was a period of time where our traffic doubled and the
alexa actually declined. It eventually catches up though....think of a random
distribution around the true value.

Just so you don't get the idea I'm picking on Alexa, estimating this stuff is
_hard_ (or the people doing it are incompetent, but that seems unlikely with
so many entrants). Quantcast and Compete.com are even worse, and ComScore is
expensive but no better than Alexa.

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loumf
Could someone here (who likes it) give a pitch for it?

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lemonysnicket
watch illegal sporting events, tv shows, etc. -- free & live

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migpwr
it's especially helpful if you're a boxing fan like i am ;-)...

I saw a chipin.com widget on there during the last event... to help cover the
cost of the broadcast(50$).

Worked out pretty well...

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axod
Congrats :) Looks like the competition is pretty much nowhere to be seen.

~~~
jacobbijani
[http://siteanalytics.compete.com/justin.tv+ustream.tv/?metri...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/justin.tv+ustream.tv/?metric=uv)

~~~
emmett
Since ustream is "quantified" on Quantcast, I know the actual traffic numbers
for both sites. And believe me when I say, Compete doesn't even resemble
reality.

~~~
jacobbijani
But alexa does?

~~~
abstractbill
It's certainly a lot closer.

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mdolon
Amazing job guys, congrats

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ryanspahn
awesome! congrats ... was a great place to launch

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kobs
Great job :-)

