Stickam
The live-webcam social network of the MySpace years: a Flash player you could stick on your profile, video rooms with six guest cams, and a who's-live page full of scene kids, emo bands and Andrew W.K. It launched in 2005, was named Nielsen's top video destination for teens in 2008, and shut down on January 31, 2013, with a short goodbye.
Stickam was launched in February 2005 as a division of Advanced Video Communications, a Japanese-owned internet video-streaming company founded the year before; Stickam itself was run out of Los Angeles. The name described the gimmick: users could embed their live webcam feed on other websites through a Flash player, sticking it to a profile page or a blog, and the site itself ran group chat rooms organized by topic around the clock, plus video rooms with seven camera slots, one for the host and six for guests. You could go live from a computer and later from an iPhone or iPad, and the team would eventually describe Stickam as "the very first website devoted to live streaming, user generated video and chat." The minimum age was 14, which tells you who showed up.
For a few years it was the place teenage internet happened out loud. TechCrunch recalled Nielsen naming Stickam the "Top Video Destination for Teens" in 2008; the site partnered with MTV, G4 and CBS Radio in 2007; the band Underoath streamed two months of studio time while recording Lost in the Sound of Separation and drew more than 1.8 million live views; Billy Corgan hosted a doll-wrestling show called Gothageddon in 2009. A user named Myles Dyer started Stickaid, an annual webathon for UNICEF, in 2007. In March 2012 the company cited 9.3 million registered users. The flip side of a site built on teenagers and live cameras was a running problem with harassment and adult predators; in July 2010 Stickam announced a zero-tolerance policy with lifetime bans for nudity, cyberbullying, harassment or anyone identified as a predator.
A $39.99-a-year VIP tier, announced in August 2012, did not fix the economics of a service that had always been free, and on January 30, 2013, the company announced it would close the next day. "We are very sad to announce Stickam will be closing down," the notice began, and the longer version read, "After seven wonderful years we are incredibly sad to have to say goodbye." It went dark at midnight on January 31, 2013, claiming 10 million registered users, 6 million monthly uniques and 3 million streams viewed a day, and stayed reachable until February 28 so people could download their recordings. No reason was given; TechCrunch guessed the site had "simply run out of steam" as YouTube and the newer streaming services absorbed the audience, and that "a fractured audience and aging core user base" had finished it. Stickaid moved to YouTube and kept its name.
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