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Justin.TV relaunches, zzz... [Updated]

Justin.TV relaunches with a slew of new features. Where's the main attraction? Sleeping in of course.

Josh Lowensohn Former Senior Writer
Josh Lowensohn joined CNET in 2006 and now covers Apple. Before that, Josh wrote about everything from new Web start-ups, to remote-controlled robots that watch your house. Prior to joining CNET, Josh covered breaking video game news, as well as reviewing game software. His current console favorite is the Xbox 360.
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Josh Lowensohn
2 min read

Editor's note: This post has been updated from first publish. See note below for more.

This morning Justin.TV has relaunched itself as a live video platform. The site is planning to enable video livecasters to build out their own video broadcasting page, complete with a custom URL, branding, and chat room. Unlike uStream.TV, which has made similar functionality available to anyone and everyone for several months now, the initial crop of broadcasters who want to use the platform will be handpicked by Justin Kan and crew. Eventually it will be opened up to anyone.

For viewers, Justin.TV has added an interesting new feature to sort through archived clips. Called "tips," users can now vote on and add their own favorite moments of Justin.TV. Other users can vote up the clips, which gets its own top 10 section on the front page. This tipping functionality has been built into the Justin.TV flash video player in the form of a "tips" button, which will automatically spit out a URL to share with others, along with embed code to put it on blogs, Web sites, and social networking profiles. The goal is to make Justin.TV content more accessible and easier to sort through.

Justin.TV now features a top 10 most popular clips listing, along with a way to archive and share live clips with others...that is if Justin wakes up. CNET Networks

Another addition to Justin.TV is the new archive viewer, which shows up as a calendar where users can input the date and time of previous Justin.TV videos. They had actually rolled out this functionality earlier in the month, although it wasn't as well integrated with the live video. Finding old clips wasn't working so well when I tried it earlier this morning, but I assume they'll iron out the kinks as the day goes on.

Maybe the funniest part of this relaunch is that Justin was fast asleep well into this morning. Not to belittle Kan's dedication (the site has been going strong for more than two months now), but nearly every time we cover new and upcoming social sites, developers and site creators are glued to their screens on opening day--interacting with existing users and those checking out the site for the very first time. If this had been my first time visiting the site, I likely wouldn't have come back.

Update: Justin.TV's producer Michael Seibel dropped us a line, and wanted to note: "...we are building a platform for live video online and not a video blogging tool. In addition, we are opening up our network in the near future and right now we are selecting participants so we can slowly scale up our network." This post has since been edited to reflect those changes. - Josh

[via TechCrunch]