The potential of justin.tv is just phenomenal right now. The platform that they've built is really going to change how entertainment is done.
Maybe you should worry that by funding justin.tv you've bankrupted future applicants of all their time.
Yer basically playing out a concept to see if you can do it and then you can either break it down and turn it into a licensing kit idea for people and get the masses to start creating their own, and adding their own personal style to it.
If you don't sell it ya got about a month until someone learns from your idea and rips it off and now yer bleeding.
Still isn't sticky.
You could play it up more and do more truman like things to it, but then yer dancing into the realm of staged content, and the real effect could wear off, but as if people really think reality shows are all that real anyways, theres always a camera man there watchin people.
I dunno. Still biggest thing for me as a would be watcher, needs stickyness. I like the fact you can embed justin like a widget, and all the bits you have to rss it out etc is nice but overall stick is lacking.
Spend, Build, Learn, Craft, License, Sell thats yer best bet here. I seriously doubt these guys can go a year, and if they could i mean my god, gun to head please, eventually the audience will WANT you to turn the thing off. People like blogs for stories and threads and ideas that get manifested into an entry, in a real time stream, that after thought processing isnt there, so you may see it you may not, stickyness is relying solely on the person in play and whether or not somethings really interesting to see.
It would be a fantastic promotional documentary for all party's involved. Heck, you could even turn it into some kind of reality Tv show if your wanted to where the 2 incubators compete somehow. 1st season broadcast via Youtube + HD websites. 2nd season via NBC.
It's 1000x better idea for a show than this http://www.iamtheprodigy.com/
its a reality based tv show where 2000 door to door summer salespeople compete to see who can sell the most, what garbage!! The people at Ycombinator and Techstars are the future leaders of the world! How much more interesting can you get!?
If your interested in this idea I will be in the Bay area March 22-27. JimmyReam@gmail.com
The problem is that most of work starting a startup is boring. So either a documentary distorts what actually goes on and shows you the interesting parts (like the one above), or you lose interest and forget about it.
My day basically goes:
1. Wake up. Start development VM. Check yCombinator. Reply to a post or two while VM boots up.
2. Implement a feature, or some administrative script, or setup some software package on server, while eating breakfast.
3. Go to day job. Work on somebody else's startup for 8 hours. Use breaks etc. to resource technologies I'll need for that night's programming.
3.b. Sketch out some feature longhand in a notebook on the train home.
4. Come home. Implement the low-hanging fruit that I just researched.
5. Eat dinner
6. Spend 2-3 hours working on some of the larger tasks that need doing.
7. Repeat.
It's pretty productive, but hardly good TV. The documentary would basically be "Jonathan staring at computer. Jonathan staring at computer. Jonathan staring at computer."
I am keeping a blog (poorly - been 2 weeks since I updated) with the day-to-day stuff. But really, that's just "Here's the challenge we just faced. Here's how we solved it. Rinse, lather, repeat."
Still, it will be huge. The next YouTube.
I don't think they'll have any trouble getting publicity, considering all Justin has to do is tell all the live viewers Digg a link to his show at a certain time. :-)
I kept having the strange urge to talk directly to people like pg, Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, as if Justin were some kind of Telepresence bot, or medium. It's weird to think of him walking around, with all these "spirits" in his head.
The robot demo was fascinating, and I love the unscriptedness. I think I prefer that to an edited or scripted documentary. You can infer a lot from the raw data that wouldn't make it through the editorial process.
They'll get some valuable patents for technology they develop, and a few hundred bucks each off the few hundred people who want to broadcast their life 24/7/365. But a big .tv-star will be able to bring in $K a day just to test a Segway, show up at the right restaurant, attend the launch party for a new startup, etc.
I'll be honest, I was thinking I was maybe going to see Justin get shot.
( These teletype services are frequently used for credit card fraud as a way for the perpetrator to remain anonymous. )