JenniCam Closing After 7+ Years

And... by dr_labrat · 2003-12-04 21:33 · Score: 5, Funny

...what better way to say goodby than giving her server a good ole fashioned slashdotting.

--
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)

The end of an era... by musingmelpomene · 2003-12-04 21:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

I think this calls for a moment of silence, or something. No, I really mean it. This was one of our first chances to see the true potential of the internet - for good and for bad. It spawned camwhores of all varieties and gave rise to a new kind of voyeurism. Goodbye to a pioneer.

Re:The end of an era... by Westacular · 2003-12-04 21:38 · Score: 5, Funny

One can only hope that camwhores everywhere might follow Jenni in this new trend.
Re:The end of an era... by Vee+Ecks · 2003-12-04 21:40 · Score: 5, Funny

Eh, whatever. Until two minutes ago when I saw this, if I'd thought about who the first girl to get nekkid in front of a webcam was, I'd have thought of her just that way: "Who was that first chick who shat and screwed on camera for all of us?"
...and that's exactly how I'll think of her as soon as this thread is over and "jennicam" has once again faded mercifully from my mind.
A moment of one-handed typing, though, sure, I'll go for that.
Re:The end of an era... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-04 21:58 · Score: 4, Funny

only if there's a G3 in the photo. Where's the G3?
Re:The end of an era... by Channard · 2003-12-04 22:03 · Score: 4, Funny

One can only hope that camwhores everywhere might follow Jenni in this new trend.
Providing the their last words aren't.. 'I told u I was hardcore.'
Re:The end of an era... by SystematicPsycho · 2003-12-04 22:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'll be glad to give it a moment of silence when shows like Big Brother and Survivor are finally gone. That's the kind of voyeurism is spawned.
--

--
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
Re: The end of an era... by Black+Parrot · 2003-12-05 02:49 · Score: 5, Funny

> It was amazing to me that people could get so worked up about seeing a fat chick's floppy boobies.

Adjust the aspect ratio, silly.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Re:The end of an era... by FuzzyBad-Mofo · 2003-12-05 02:59 · Score: 4, Funny

You're right, those Samoans have no excuse..
Re:The end of an era... by Drakonian · 2003-12-05 08:18 · Score: 4, Informative

Not sure if that was meant to be funny or not. But for those that don't get the allusion, it's pretty serious stuff. Here's the article from May 2003 Harper's. The guy documents overdosing on drugs in a chatroom and dies as everyone else debates whether he is serious/tries to call for help.

--
Random is the New Order.

Am I the only one? by sageo · 2003-12-04 21:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

Who didn't know about this site OR care when they heard about it?

Re:Am I the only one? by tres · 2003-12-04 22:53 · Score: 5, Funny

Ah isn't it great ushering in the next generation? Doesn't it just make you feel old as dirt to hear someone who is not only ignorant of Jennicam, but also indignant of the idea that he should know about it.

I begin to understand the sad forlorn look in their eyes when my parents would wax poetic about something so banal as the A&P grocery stores and I'd indignantly grumble, "who cares?"

I expect now we'll be saying names like Robert Smith or Steven Morrissey and get quizzical looks, "um.. yeah... huh huh... aren't they like, the ice-cream guys or something... huh huh... huh"

Jeez

You whippersnappers, listen up:

Back when I was your age, we didn't have color screens. Back then, a gui was something you pulled out of your nose.

When I was your age, we loaded programs onto our computers using cassette tapes. We waited 20 minutes for the program to load up, and if we were lucky, it ran.

When I was your age, we didn't have C compilers that were free. We had BASIC, and if you were lucky, you had Pascal.

Back when I was your age, a 9800 baud was one thrilling piece of hardware.

We had computers that weighed over 100 pounds.

AND WE WERE GLAD.

--
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
Re:Am I the only one? by Wansu · 2003-12-05 00:55 · Score: 4, Funny

Back when I was your age, we didn't have color screens.

Well, ol' man, back when I was your age, we didn't have monochrome monitors. We had punch cards, card readers and a line printer. Yessir.

When I was your age, we loaded programs onto our computers using cassette tapes.

We carried shoeboxes full of punched cards over to the card reader. Woe unto those unfortunate souls who dropped theirs.

We had BASIC, and if you were lucky, you had Pascal.

We had Fortran, PL1, Assembler and JCL.

Back when I was your age, a 9800 baud was one thrilling piece of hardware.

Try 300 baud thru an acoustical coupler.

We had computers that weighed over 100 pounds.

The IBM 29 card punch weighed more than that. So did the Harris card reader. Lord knows what the IBM 360 mainframe weighed. The line printers needed paulbearers.

--
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Re:Am I the only one? by Davak · 2003-12-05 01:07 · Score: 5, Funny

I wondered how old one had to be to get a 3-digit slashdot ID.

Now we know. :)

/Running and ducking

Davak
Re:Am I the only one? by AKnightCowboy · 2003-12-05 01:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

I guess she's faded into insignificance, because all the teenagers who watched her with the hope of seeing her naked have grown up.
No, they've just watched the Internet evolve into the greatest pornography distribution system the world has ever known. In 1994 it was hard to find any good free porn sites.. 1995 brought the businesses who locked down their porn and blurred it out for guests. Eventually the race to compete for customers brought us to the point where you can now just type in random URLs and get to a hardcore pornography site. Who needs to sit around on Jennicam.com hoping some 30+ year old chick takes her shirt off? God bless the Interweb and smut peddlers.
Re:Am I the only one? by Divide+By+Zero · 2003-12-05 01:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

Baffles me that she's more popular than Linus.

Look at it this way: A(n occasionally naked) girl gets more votes from Internet users than Linus in a popularity contest. I would have been genuinely surprised if Linus had won. [Put your favorite Diebold/election fraud joke here!]

She -was- one of the first people I would consider a "net.celebrity" in that she'd gotten mainstream press coverage for what she was doing on her website. It wasn't a pr0n website by-and-large, although I have seen a few images from what must be early Jennicam that made it look like she was taking requests for nudity. The vast majority of the time I caught it, it was either her at her computer or out of the house or her cat on her computer chair or some crap.

I always saw it as more of a cam-blog, before there was "blogging" as we understand it today. You could peek in and see the new boyfriend or maybe a change she'd made to her furniture or whatever. Mundane, but still something that you checked out anyhow.

I can't say that I'll actively miss it (I haven't seen the site in probably over a year), but it does strike me as an end-of-an-era sort of thing. Jennicam came out in the "frontier" days of the Internet - a time where the general public didn't know what a URL was, before "camwhore" was a word, before the corporate world started to use it as a marketing tool. It was just some chick who put her life on the internet as sort of a diary or exhibitionistic social experiment. In that sense, I am sad to see her site go, because to me it represents that time now gone, and I'm a sap when it comes to that sort of thing.

--
Dare to Hope. Prepare to be Disappointed.
Re:Am I the only one? by mfender9 · 2003-12-05 03:26 · Score: 5, Funny

Well, ol' man, back when I was your age, we didn't have monochrome monitors. We had punch cards, card readers and a line printer. Yessir.
We had to send smoke signals in through a plastic funnel. Our printer was an old man carving output into a tree with a rock.
We had Fortran, PL1, Assembler and JCL.
We had Onetran, PL0, and French.
Try 300 baud thru an acoustical coupler.
Try making bleep noises down a piece of string through a tin can. 0.5 baud if the winds were favorable.
The IBM 29 card punch weighed more than [100lbs]
The Sears WonderBox 1900 was so heavy, it needed a special floor.

end of life, universe and the internet by martin · 2003-12-04 21:38 · Score: 5, Interesting

OK
webcrawler starts to suck
altavista goes static
google has problems with retricting searches (until recently try getting info on baseball in the UK!), bloggers etc
napster goes legit (but available only in the USofA)
MP3.com get bought by C-NEt and all the content 'gets lost'
now Jenni-cam is to be no more

well that's it, I'm off to desert to eat sand, the internet is dead :-)

Re:end of life, universe and the internet by tankdilla · 2003-12-04 22:02 · Score: 5, Funny

Whoa man, i'd totally forgotten about Webcrawler. Takes me back to high school (about 6 years) and trying to actually search for pr0n. Nowadays pr0n searches for you, here in Sovie....err rather everywhere actually.

--
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
Re:end of life, universe and the internet by djward · 2003-12-05 02:31 · Score: 4, Interesting

I remember searching for pr0n on webcrawler. It was kinda funny: at one point early on I searched for "sex" and all that came up was a few Sex Pistols fan sites. A few months later I tried again, and got the results we all know and love. It just amazes me how fast smut exploded (splooged?) onto the internet.

Closing when? by phalse+phace · 2003-12-04 21:40 · Score: 5, Funny

JenniCam has announced that it is closing permanently on New Year's Eve.

Um... I think she'll be closing sooner than that once we get through /.ing her.

Re:Closing when? by Hakubi_Washu · 2003-12-04 22:47 · Score: 4, Funny

Talk about GangBang... :-)

I didn't know :-( by dtfinch · 2003-12-04 21:41 · Score: 5, Funny

All this time, I could have had her webcam appear whenever I visited Slashdot. Even the guest gallery (there's also a paid members only gallery) is loaded with full nudity and "playing". Even during the past week. Live news and live porn all in the same place. Too bad it'll be over after this month.

Closing Jennicam? by xeno_gearz · 2003-12-04 21:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

On one hand, I could lament the "loss" of an internet mainstay of whom many of us were aware of. On the other hand, webcams have become so overdone. Every teenage girl and her best friend have one. Consequently, this is played out. So who cares? I'm sure "Jenny" has realized she has better things to do than pose on a webcam.

On the other hand, perhaps Jenny's subscriptions were dropping as creepy men were finding other girls' webcams to ogle. Maybe Jenny realized that her extended 15 minutes of fame are finally up. No disrespect though. She certainly seems to have garnered all the attention she could from a webcam.

Remember the coffee cam? Now that was cool. Wasn't it at MIT?

--
*
troll blacklist. Please mo

Re:Closing Jennicam? by Meowing · 2003-12-04 21:48 · Score: 5, Informative

Remember the coffee cam? Now that was cool. Wasn't it at MIT?
Close, sort of. it was at the other Cambridge.
Re:Closing Jennicam? by JimBobJoe · 2003-12-04 23:02 · Score: 4, Interesting

On the other hand, webcams have become so overdone. Every teenage girl and her best friend have one.

And this is indeed true...and we can thank Jenni for that. I remember reading and finding the site in 1996 (which is when I first got broadband) and this was pretty hot shit at that time. Quite innovative--I believe I read about her in Wired. The fact that she lasted this long is actually amazing...and is a testament to her patience.

Not only did she invent this idea of camwhore (though camwhores usually perform on camera and eventually turn it off...at least, there won't be a good picture if they're not at the computer) Jenni wired her house with cameras (though that seems to have dropped off with time.)

This was of course a form of porn (figuratively and literally) and she might have even made a bit of profit in these years...much like the porn industry.

Camwhores still represent a troublesome frontier. 16 year old girls everywhere are taking off their clothes for free. Guys of all ages watch (and even if there weren't any watching, the girls would be doing it anyway.) That's gotta keep Ashcroft up late at night.
Re:Closing Jennicam? by Zontar+The+Mindless · 2003-12-05 00:39 · Score: 4, Funny

16 year old girls everywhere are taking off their clothes for free. Guys of all ages watch (and even if there weren't any watching, the girls would be doing it anyway.) That's gotta keep Ashcroft up late at night.
Nice double entendre there at the end, mate.

--
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Re:Closing Jennicam? by toastyman · 2003-12-05 00:53 · Score: 5, Interesting

Just a note...

I (believe) that I'm the one who originally coined the term "camwhore". (My original registration of camwhores.com/camwhore.com predates any mention of it in google/usenet/archive.org, and the oldest web archive I can find is an IRC log of me).

The word "camwhores" itself was sort of a pun... Sure it had the sexual connotations, but we all were talking about how people who like the attention their webcams gave them struggled with the moral impact of showing random strangers on the internet more of their intimate life than most of their friends have seen. whore n. A person considered as having compromised principles for personal gain.

A whole industry of webcam portals, from Jennicam to Stile Project's old cam portals back in the 90's(which evolved into camwhores.com) to the huge sites that are out there now have really changed a lot of how porn works. You didn't have to sell your soul and have sex with strangers in a studio to play with your exhibitionist side. You don't have to make a cheesy home video and try to get your friends to watch it. The live nature of webcam porn lets the viewer interact with the person in front of the cam directly. And this isn't just a fringe minority either, do you really think the hundreds of thousands of webcams sold are just used to videoconference with grandma? When Gateway bundled a webcam with most of their college-geared desktops a year or so ago, the number of applicants on our site alone doubled.

However, the reason for this whole post(not just because of my personal involvement with the word)... The whole "Camwhores" scene is NOT about underage girls. All the major webcam portals, adult hosting sites, one-on-one show sites, and everyone else are really really strict about age verification and policing their content.

The last thing we need is Ashcroft running TV ads saying that webcams fund terrorists. :)

Anyway, Jenni was surely one of the big pioneers of this whole thing, and I wish her the best.
Re:Closing Jennicam? by daviddennis · 2003-12-05 05:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

I think I was the first user of the JenniCam. I knew her from her original Tour of Her Body web site, and had a mad crush on her for some time.

Anyway, she told me she got a cam, and primitive software that loaded a new picture every minute, and she was showing it to me hosted off her dorm room Mac.

The images were black and white, and at that time Jenni was a really hot-looking girl. (I haven't looked lately, so I won't comment on her current status). It began as something private, a special moment or two shared between her and her friends.

For a while I even hosted her site, but eventually had to move due to the huge bandwidth use once she took it public.

For her, it was never about the money, it was about showing her life, as it was. I admired her for that and still do.

But she did wind up changing. For a long time, I had an archive featuring her most charming pictures, and if you were persistent enough, you could see her naughtiest. But she made me take it down, with a remarkably cold note threatening legal action. I thought that was contrary to the original spirit of it, but since I didn't want to hurt her, I respected her wishes.

So yes, today I shed a tear for her innovation, her charm and her creation. What a long strange trip it's been.

I wonder what she will do next ...

D

Well that sucks... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-04 21:45 · Score: 5, Funny

...but there's always DarlCam.

Jenni is just maturing, is all by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2003-12-04 21:48 · Score: 5, Funny

JenniCam isn't closing, it's just changing name to reflect the fact that Jenni is getting ripe. Here are the official domain names she'll use in the future:
- PreggyCam.org - MommyCam.org - MenopausyCam.org - NannyCam.org - CoffinCam.org

--
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash

Jumped the Shark... by abbamouse · 2003-12-04 21:48 · Score: 4, Interesting

...when she dissed her best friend who helped her move in next door by nabbing her fiance. Well, actually that was interesting but it turned into a long-term relationship. Dex just makes my skin crawl and the cam and journal got really boring after that. I mean, there's only so much gardening crap a person can read about. It was more interesting before she settled down. I think I've checked the cam like four times in the last year...

--
Make cheese not war 8:)

Re:Jumped the Shark... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-04 22:08 · Score: 5, Funny

From the sound of it, I'd say more like four times in the last half-hour. Man, you are seriously creeping me out here...
Re:Jumped the Shark... by weave · 2003-12-04 22:09 · Score: 4, Informative

True. Also, around that same time she moved from DC to CA and got a day job, so most of the day there was nothing to look at except the occasional cat.
I'm still going to miss her.

Am I the only one ... by Unleashd · 2003-12-04 21:48 · Score: 5, Funny

that saw this article and started to hear Forest yell "Don't go Jennay"

--
We don't need no stinking sig!

Re:too old? by xeniten · 2003-12-04 21:54 · Score: 5, Funny

Jennie is NOT a cam girl!!!

Jennie used the camera as a medium of self expression and speech, a means and method of recording her life for all to see on the internet. Jenniecam really was purely a social experiment.

She will be greatly missed.

--
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"

Much more interesting camgirl by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-04 22:08 · Score: 5, Informative

While Jenni is mildly attractive, there are far more sexier and interesting camgirls out there. My favourite at the moment is Mercatur, a mid-twenties web designer.

Unlike Jenni, she is actually an interesting writer. She tackles wide-ranging and amusing subjects like why girls should only sleep with computer geeks (link) to advice on how to give good head to a guy (link).

She is also extremely cute. And single, I believe ;-)

Re:Much more interesting camgirl by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-04 22:21 · Score: 5, Funny

Uhhh..Are you on drugs? That woman has a face like a Playstation controller.
Re:Much more interesting camgirl by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-04 22:26 · Score: 5, Funny

A true geek, relating a girl's features to a computer component.
Although I did see a girl today whose chest was as flat as the underside of a motherboard.
Re:Much more interesting camgirl by DeltaSigma · 2003-12-04 23:24 · Score: 5, Interesting

Anwering my own question: She is "...currently a circulation manager at a publishing house."
After seeing her "got root?" T-Shirt I just HAD to know what system she's running. According to her faq she uses "...Photoshop 5.5, ImageReady for compression, notepad for html..."
Photoshop and Imageready, fine, you need Windows for that. Fair enough. Most professional web designers I know are stuck with windows (though the clever ones use crossover office), whether they want to or not.
However, no self respecting linux geek would resist the chance to make it known to the public that they like either emacs or vim. I mean, notepad? Yeah, sure, I'm happy she can throw some markup together, nevermind the fact that she's not adhering to standards, it's still better than the stuff WYSIWYG editors spew out their little iso-8859-1 orifaces.
...and you know what, I wouldn't even be so upset about all this if it wasn't for your misrepresentation of her.
I mean, sure she has an appreciable interest in technology, built her desktops herself, does manage her own page, likes geeks. But fair warning to other web designers: if you want something pretty to look at whilst discussing the lack of standards in web content, or the lack of design within sites, I have the suspicion that you might be disappointed.
...though I'd very truly love to be proven wrong about her.
Re:Much more interesting camgirl by liquidsin · 2003-12-05 00:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

No self respecting web designer would have that stupid-ass mouse trailer on their own website.

--
do not read this line twice.
Re:Much more interesting camgirl by ScottSpeaks! · 2003-12-05 00:39 · Score: 5, Informative

...advice on how to give good head to a guy...
"Don't vary your speed"?!? {shakes head sadly}
Going to another woman for advice on how to give good head is like the blind leading the blind. Ask a gay man for tips, ladies. We actually know of what we speak. :)
Re:Much more interesting camgirl by IthnkImParanoid · 2003-12-05 04:30 · Score: 4, Funny

Be careful?

--
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.

In other news... by Zog+The+Undeniable · 2003-12-04 22:14 · Score: 4, Funny

The goatse man announced that, after revolting an entire generation of net users, he was taking his fingers out of his bottom and looking forward to a well-earned sit down. "Frankly, it's hard to find sponsorship these days as all my visitors appear to come from a geek discussion site and leave again within 5 seconds. My fingers are also starting to get cramp and I've been advised that any stools I pass in future may not be accommodated by a standard 4-inch waste pipe", he added.

--
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.

Maybe not to you... by Channard · 2003-12-04 22:26 · Score: 4, Insightful

Watching someone else's life just doesn't appeal to me I guess...

Maybe not to you, but to Joe Public it does. In fact, the preponderance of webcams may have had something to do with the rise in popularity of reality TV. Here in the UK, we get Fame Academy, Big Brother, Celebrity Big Brother, and a slew of tedious TV shows that someone must be watching for them to stay on air. Maybe the majority of Slashdotters are just too cynical to be swayed by that sort of thing, but there are plenty of people who are convinced other peoples lives are somehow better than their own, and therefore worthy of viewing.

Who went to a Jennicon? by Saint+Stephen · 2003-12-04 23:25 · Score: 4, Interesting

In (1999) I think, I went to a JenniCon. It was fun. She had a timeshare place in Virginia. There were about 14 people there. All the other guys were crashing on the floor of her timeshare -- I rented a place on the other side of the complex.

She's just a gen-Y pothead. (She and her then boyfriend smoked Pot the whole time, and didn't offer us any. I finally got her to pass me the bong and TreeH got nervous in case they saw me doing it on the cam).

I think she was part of some national psychological program to profile us Internet Whackos. Whatever. I was there.

Jennicam Pr0n on letterman / PBS by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-04 23:28 · Score: 4, Funny

Back in the day, I whored many a domain name.
Among others, I controled NPR.com and jennicam.com

Jennicam was at Jennicam.ORG

One night Jenni was interviewed on letterman and the traffic to the jennicam.com webpage spiked. We put up pr0n banners and an giant headline saying "Jenni is behind one of these banners" -- Those banners generated several thousand bucks. I doubt the users ever found the jenni they were looking for, but they sure clicked.

One user heard about all this jennicam business on NPR and went to jennicam.COM instead of .ORG -- She was so outraged to find pr0n banners she quickly fired off an email to webmaster@npr.COM complaining about the pr0n. I laughed really hard when I found that in the e-mail catchall. I wrote her back and told her to donate to NPR so we didn't have to continue to put up pr0n banners.

Aaah jennicam. That stupid whore. NPR and jennicam .COM names now point at the expected places. :)

age comments ... hee, hee by cascadingstylesheet · 2003-12-05 00:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

Hee, hee ... I just love the wtf, she must be , like, 27 or even 30 now! Of course she has to quit! posts ...

Yes, egads, how could a 27-30 year old woman possibly be attractive? :o

Hmm, maybe I should just be glad that there is a whole segment of the population too stupid to give me any competition ;)

Continental Drift by Pete · 2003-12-05 00:48 · Score: 5, Funny

Thank god we've still got the thrill-a-minute continental drift cam.

Much more intelligent. And more exciting.

:-)

Pete.

Interview by lxs · 2003-12-05 00:58 · Score: 5, Interesting

Any chance of a slashdot interview by way of a farewell?

I've Got It! I've Got It! by tds67 · 2003-12-05 01:30 · Score: 5, Funny

Jenni, I've got your number,
I need to make you mine,
Jenni, don't change your number:
64.141.14.2 (Chorus) 64.141.14.2!

This is a big moment by gamgee5273 · 2003-12-05 02:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

Understandable, but big. I remember when it came online (yes, Virginia, it was a big thing in the college student Internet community). I checked in on her from time to time and I actually knew an English graduate student who was studying JenniCam as a sort of dynamic autobiography (English students want to see the "textual" in a lot of things... books, poetry, video, toast... I know, I was one). The argument made sense, though, as JenniCam is (or, soon will be, was) an almost completely exposed private life unfolding in front of the viewers' eyes.

And, yes, I was one of the ones who thoguh she was cute. Still do, too. :D

Good-bye, Jenni.

A pioneer.... by TheSync · 2003-12-05 02:51 · Score: 4, Interesting

Jenni was definately a "pioneer." I believe she was the first person to do the 24/7 homecam thing in a serious way. And I think her existance helped to drive a lot of reality-based entertainment, including influencing the writers of "The Truman Show". She also was an early blogger.

My wife and I worked with her to produce "The Jennishow," a series of streaming video shows about her crazy life, which changed the course of our company, and without it there never would have been a "Geeks in Space" Slashdot radio show.

We had a lot of fun filming "The Jennishow," including going for a ride in a private plane of a fan, JenniCon with the "top fans", and another fan leading us to the house at the end of the Blair Witch Project. It was a trip!

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JenniCam Closing After 7+ Years

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