Subcategories, Better Forums, and Directory Improvements!

We've just released a bunch of features we've been working on for the past two weeks:

• Faster Video Load - We've optimized our video server to respond much faster!
  
• Subcategories / Broadcast Titles - Broadcasters will now be requested to title and choose category and subcategories every time they broadcast, which will appear on the directory!
• Directory Improvements - Find things faster with our new, better looking directory.
• Networks - Watch video for Network channels right on the Network pages!
• Forums - We've added sticky posts and topic folders to make Forums better!

Next week we'll be releasing many more improvements to let you better discover content on Justin.tv. Stay tuned!

Release: improved video!

This week we've released a video improvement which should cut out almost all the audio and video distortions (audio blips and pink pixels) from video feeds! We have a big Networks and Directory release coming up, but weren't able to work out all the bugs in time for this week. Look for it soon!

Cheers,

Justin

Notice: JTV will start removing old archives

UPDATE: The form is now closed, thanks to everyone for understanding!

Due to the increasing cost of storing archived broadcasts, Justin.tv will begin removing archives more than 30 days old starting Friday, July 25th. By cutting this significant portion of our bandwidth expenditures, we'll be able to focus more on features that our users actually want (very few people watch non-highlighted archives older than one month).

For current broadcasters:

We're still going to save all highlights ever created, so just create highlights of the old archives you'd like to save. If you really want all of your old archives saved, we've decided to allow current broadcasters to save everything by putting their username into this form by Friday, July 25th at noon. We can't guarantee that we'll save them forever, but we will for now. We'd much prefer that you create highlights of the content you will want to keep.

Thanks,

Justin

Justin.tv surpasses 1,000,000 registered users!

We are proud to announce that as of 8:39 AM GMT on Saturday July 19, 2008 Justin.tv has passed 1 million registered users.

Thank you to "Detres" and to the 999,999 other amazing people from over 220 countries and territories who have joined the Justin.tv community since our launch on March 19, 2007.

Our registered users create the content that makes Justin.tv the number one realtime video site online generating over 90 million pageviews and 5 million unique visitors in June 2008.

Here is a sample of what 1 million users can do:

1,721,868 friendships made
90,690 channels created
522,794 favorited channels
95,253 video highlights saved
29,167 playlists generated
24,478 events broadcasted
61,562 video clips uploaded to youtube
62,278 twitter messages sent
16,294 myspace bulletins sent
119 years of video broadcasted & archived

And here is a graph of our user growth over the past year:



Thank you once again!

- JTV Staff

PS: And as a cherry on top - Sunday July 20th was the biggest traffic day in the history of Justin.tv. 4,458,444 pageviews and 371,905 unique visitors!

Thursday Release, Rails 2.1 upgrade

This probably won't mean a lot to the non-technical of you out there, but we finally upgraded the site to Rails 2.1. There are a few hiccups in the release right now, which we are actively working out, but hopefully JTV will be up and running smoothly (and much faster) soon!

Also, we've put in a fix for the view counts problem, so going forward from today there shouldn't be any more resetting of your view counts.

Best,

Justin

Flash Player 10 beta

Earlier in the month Adobe Labs released a beta version of Flash Player 10 for developers to test out the upcoming features the stable version of Flash 10 will offer. There will be a lot of exciting features and fixes to Adobe Flash that will make things better and help out you Mac and Linux users. Flash 10 beta, however, is not a stable version and due to this still has some kinks in it. We look forward to supporting Flash 10 when it is released for stable public use. Until then, we recommend that you continue to use Flash 9 as we are not currently supporting the Beta release of Flash 10.

Justin.tv Embeds

It's easy to embed Justin.tv video and chat onto your own website. Just go to the channel you want to embed and look under the video for the 'Share' link.

Clicking it will reveal the html you need to copy and paste into your website to get the embed. There are a few options:



Video Embed


Watch live video from The (Justin.tv) Office on Justin.tv


Chat Embed



Watch live video from The (Justin.tv) Office on Justin.tv


Customizable Chat and Video Embed

You can also embed Episodes and Fan Highlights. Just click through to the Highlight you want and click the share button reveal the HTML.


Watch live video from Justin.tv on Justin.tv

Safety Tips

Justin.tv is a thriving community where our members can express themselves, reach out to new friends and keep in touch with current friends. Keeping yourself safe online while using social sites like Justin.tv is important. Here are some common sense guidelines that you should remember when using Justin.tv:

• Your profile and channel is public. Don't make anything public that you wouldn't want everyone on the internet to know (e.g., your phone number, address, IM screen names, or specific whereabouts). Avoid giving up any information that would make it easy for a stranger to find you. It is very easy to piece together information to do web searches to find out more information about a person.
• People aren't always who they say they are. Be mindful when adding new people to your friends list. Justin.tv is a great place to make new friends from around the world, but avoid meeting people in person whom you don't really know.
• Don't post anything that would embarrass you later. Remember anything you post might not be seen only by your friends, the truth is everyone can see it. Be mindful of what you are putting up on Justin.tv. Don't put anything up that you wouldn't want your parents, potential employers, colleges or boss to see.
• Don't pretend to be older or younger than you really are. Honesty is the best policy and can keep you out of trouble in the long run.

Features to help you

• Private Channels: When you add an access code to your channel it becomes private. Only those who you have given the access code to will be able to view your channel. You can turn this on while logged on at the Settings, Channel Info menu.
• Banned Words: There are a lot of features offered to help you keep your chat clean. From the Chat tab in your settings. You can ban words which you find offensive or select to ban the most commonly banned words around Justin.tv. From this area you are able to turn showing links off in your chat and see chatters who you have banned from your rooms.
• Block Messages: You can choose to block messages from anyone that is not your friend.
  
• Chat Moderation: With our chat moderation tools you can have moderators, ignore users, ban users, use slow mode and friends only chat. (Read our chatguide for help using these features!)

Additional Information:
You can learn more about how to keep yourself safe on the internet as well as get some additional tips from some of these resources:

• OnGuard Online: FTC safety tips for parents
• Netsmartz.org
• WiredSafety.org
• The Child Safety Network
• GetNetWise.org
• SafeTeens.com
• BlogSafety.Com
• Common Sense Media
• SafeFamilies.org

New Forum Post Editor! Arabic and Chinese JTV!

We're trying out a new editor for forum posts this week, which should make it easy to add lists, images, and links to forum posts! Try it out by going to a forum (e.g. The Official JTV Forum), clicking a topic, and posting something.

Remember, you can always create your own Network and Forum!

We've also just released Justin.tv in Arabic and Chinese Traditional and Simplified.

Have a great weekend!

Justin

We're back up!

After much work and effort we've got everything up. This downtime was due a server crash and there was a period of time where we weren't able to get to the servers to take care of this issue. Once we got there we were able to investigate the problem fully and eventually got to the root of the problem.

Everything is running smoothly and fully functional. I want to make sure everyone knows that this was a server issue and is in no relation to security issues. This recent downtime is not connected to any security issues.

Thanks for sticking with us and being so patient during this downtime and thanks to Evan for hunting down this problem and keeping up with it. You guys are all really great!

Server Maintainence

We're hard at work bringing the site back to full. I want to thank everyone for your patience and I'm sorry for the sporatic problems. Everything should be up and running soon. I'll post updates once everything is up and going in tip top shape again.

Security Concerns

Dear Justin.tv Broadcasters and Viewers,

First, we want to apologize for the security holes that have been exploited during the past 5 days. Justin.tv is forever committed to maintaining the security and privacy of all of its users. We understand that problems do occur that they are very serious and deserve our undivided attention. Furthermore, we need to improve our methods of reaching out to the community about problems and fixes much sooner. "We are working on it" is not good enough. We are committed acting faster and communicating better.

On the technical side, as a result of the security vulnerabilities that have been uncovered - we currently doing a full security review of the site.

With that said, we want to take a second to discuss what has occurred over the past 5 days. On Saturday we started to receive emails from users saying that their account had been compromised. On Saturday night we found a vulnerability that allowed someone to gain access to another users account without needing their username and password. Emmett worked tirelessly to fix the bug and released a patch on sunday morning. We were informed that as a result of the first vulnerability, personal communications from a number of justin.tv users were posted on flickr for all to see. We greatly regret that this occurred and apologize that we were not able to find and fix this vulnerability sooner. On tuesday and similar vulnerability was found and it was fixed within 2 hours. Tonight Tia and Emmett are hosting a townhall meeting a 6pm pacific at www.justin.tv/help. They will be broadcasting and answering you questions about security issues on the site.

Please join us.