Lifecasting's the extreme sport of oversharing. With cheap webcams and broadband available, it was only logical that the attention-seekers among us — most people under the age of 30, in other words — would start broadcasting themselves online, 24/7. It's not for everyone — Julia Allison, the New York dating columnist, claims to lifecast, but her sporadic videos don't even come close to the full-time lifecaster's output.

What's less explicable is why anyone, on either side of the camera, thought they could make money off the practice. A cottage industry of startups — Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Kyte, Mogulus, and so on — sprang up around the naive belief that where there's a screen, there's an audience to sell. Even Yahoo got into the business. The hype fueled lifecasters' dreams of becoming famous and website operators' hopes to profit off their fantasies. Some lifecasters — like Justine Ezarik, also known as iJustine — even thought they'd parlay online notoriety into a business of their own selling product placements in their so-called lives.

None of that panned out. Advertisers only value authenticity when it's carefully scripted; the actual surprise of live broadcasts — violence, profanity, and sheer weirdness — is not a value proposition for them. And while lifecasting services have signed up millions of users, most attract an audience that numbers in the tens. No surprise, then, that Yahoo Live, the fading Internet giant's try at the market, is shutting down today.

A farewell video made by a Yahoo Live user, with clips cobbled together from various feeds, shows the problem. It's nearly impossible to police live broadcasts, leaving sites vulnerable to outbreaks of sex and nudity — or worse. And some will pay any price for fame. One Justin.tv lifecaster overdosed on camera last month — and some of his viewers laughed cruelly as he died.

If site operators do manage to keep things clean, users feel nannied to death — and are left boring each other silly. The most common activity on Yahoo Live? Spinning around in one's desk chair, over and over. Here's the best illustration — only slightly NSFW — of why lifecasting will persist as a mind-numbing timewaster long after it proves not to be a path to glory:

Stephen is the proprietor of The Tech Buzz, and normally uses his Ustream.tv account to broadcast the unboxing of new gadgets. Think of this as more of a meatware unboxing, or "unvadging" if you will. Certainly raises the stakes on the woman who tweeted her birth. Also, I'd like to take a moment to thank my mom for her foresight in giving birth to me long before this kind of thing was technically feasible.

Our source tells us Laporte gets about 700 to 1,000 simultaneous viewers when TWiT streams over Ustream.tv. TWiT's Ustream profile page says the show has been viewed 647,249 times so far this year, suggesting Stickam plans to pay Laporte a $51 CPM. For a moment, a I felt a jealous twinge typing those numbers. But that passed as soon as I discovered a list of TWiT's regular guests on Wikipedia. They include: "John C. Dvorak, Roger Chang, Patrick Norton, Alex Lindsay, Wil Harris, Jason Calacanis, Veronica Belmont, Molly Wood, and Tom Merritt."

Michael Siebel, Justin.tv:

Justin.tv is the biggest live video startup with the most traffic, the most registered users, and the best community. But it wasn't easy to get to the top spot. There are many hard problems to building and scaling a live video site and Yahoo Live is going through those pains currently. I think YouTube will face similar challenges.

YouTube's reported plans to move into live video is important validation for the market and will bring more awareness to the ways live video is changing the way people access media online. Ustream.TV has been singularly focused on live video broadcasting for more than a year now, and has built a large base of regular, compelling broadcasters who use our simple, reliable and robust platform to stream compelling, event-based content to a broad range of audiences across the globe, many of which weren't before privy to such media. Our growth is further evidenced by the traction we have gained through partnerships with leading companies such as Veoh, Digg, Sun Microsystems, the Republican National Convention, Bebo and others; the 200,000 broadcasters and millions of viewers that are now using our site regularly, and the daily growth we continue to experience. We welcome YouTube to this growing market and are glad that even more consumers will have access to great live video content.

The disastrous beta launch of Yahoo Live puts the spotlight on firms like Ustream.tv and Justin.tv. There are more than a few companies that could easily integrate a streaming video service into their content strategy, including Microsoft, Apple, YouTube, or any number of camera and PC manufacturers.

Ustream focuses more on broadcasts of events, rather than lifecasts — those intensely boring 24/7 video streams of people's lives. Ustream has streamed several major concerts, including some from Hannah Montana, and has been used by a number of presidential candidates, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, to broadcast exclusive events. The Republican National Convention will be on Ustream this summer. This focus on "eventcasting" could make it more respectable than a lifecasting startup — and more tempting to a major buyer like Microsoft.

Yahoo! Advanced Products releases an internal alpha of the new video service Yahoo! Live.

Yahoo! Live is social TV, where you're the star! Create your own social broadcasting experience. Start by broadcasting yourself from your webcam, invite your friends to chat with you, they'll go live with you, and you're all on candid camera!

The service is scheduled for release in early February, but be the first to test it and tell us what you think!

Join our mailing list at http://ilist.yahoo.com/wws/info/ylive-discuss for general discussion and to announce upcoming broadcasts.

We know it's easy to get carried away once you're on camera, but a few things to keep in mind about Yahoo! Live -
- This is an internal alpha release (Yahoos only!) so it's confidential.
- The service is still in development and may undergo outages, so any data saved may be lost prior to public launch.
- The service may not be accessible if you are on a wireless connection, due to security concerns. You can work around this by setting your browser to go through a proxy server. Here's how: http://twiki.corp.yahoo.com/view/Mingle/SocksProxyHowTo. Otherwise, please use the service from a hard wired connection.

I'm drunk, stranded 'til morning, and standing in the center divider, with Pete Cashmore, the founder of Mashable, waving my arms wildly in a failing attempt to hail a taxi. It was 12:30 a.m. in front of the Herbst Theater, and the night was proving to be completely ridiculous. Before I continue, lets step back seven hours so you can fully comprehend the insanity of my night at The Crunchies.

At our hotel in Sunnyvale, my associate (Mazy/Mind1: 18) and I (Mind A: 19) were getting ready to leave. We'd flown in from Orange County for two things. First, to fill out a bunch of paperwork for our newly accepted jobs at Ustream.tv, and second to attend the Crunchies. We weren't expecting much at 5:20 when we left in our sports jackets to head to the event. Maybe we'd meet a few low-level people and at the very least get to see the Richter Scales perform. As we sprinted to the bus stop we almost got run over. Luckily it wasn't our night to die. Now, I love public transportation, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sweating a little bit by the time we'd taken the bus, train, BART and finally ran our dressed-up asses into Herbst Theater at 7:25, with five minutes to spare.

The awards have already been summarized by everyone and their mom so I'll just skip over that part. However, I would like to point out that sitting in the crowd was a very humbling and exciting experience. I've been to conferences and the like but this was my first time visiting San Francisco and The Valley, and honestly nothing can compare. As I sat in the balcony I was surrounded by people exactly like me and I felt like I belonged.

As we walked out smiling and satisfied with the ceremony, we only became more gleeful when free champagne was basically forced into our hands as we entered the afterparty. As we talked to a few random people we somehow managed to drink a considerable amount of free booze and, armed with our tipsiness we began to do some serious mingling. This is where things start to get really interesting.

First we ran into Kevin Rose. Then Arrington (TechCrunch), Zuckerberg (Facebook), and Cashmore (Mashable). It was freaking crazy! At one point a random black guy accidentally bumped into me. He said sorry and we casually talked for a minute or two. The next day I found out that it was MC Hammer.

We had long conversations with all of them (except Zuckerberg — he was kind of a dick) and exchanged our temporary Kinko's-printed business cards for their snazzy, well-designed ones. Strangely enough, I distinctly remember them all commenting on how sweet our cards were ... personally I think they're crazy.

•flips card* "This is pretty sweet..." *flips card again* "I like these." — Michael Arrington

At 12:30 a.m., everyone finally got kicked out of the party and this brings me back to where I started. A dozen of us were looking for another party but we were out of luck. We ended up getting taxis and heading over to a restaurant called Oola, where we bribed the cooks to reopen the kitchen. The dozen consisted of people from Mashable, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, and various other companies. $300 of food later everyone was ready to hit the sack. Somehow we ended up catching a ride with three guys who we found out all worked at TechCrunch. The whole way back they complained about how their office was actually Arrington's house and how Mashable was the equivalent to the asshole of the tech blog world. We liked Pete Cashmore so we defended him as best we could.

At 3 a.m. we made it to our hotel. Once in the room we felt like kissing the ground as if we hadn't expected to ever make it back alive. In utter disbelief at the night's events, we fell asleep knowing we had jobs at a startup we love and new friends from companies we respect. The only thing left is to move up and officially become a part of this amazing community. We tip our hats to the people of the Valley, we'll be coming "home" soon.

-Matt Schlicht (Mind A)

P.S. - If you know of any cheap apartments in the Valley, let us know.

Ezarik quickly rose to the top of the lifecasting niche, and now she's cashing in. That she's going with an unknown just shows how her own brand has outgrown all the services she uses. But will her old flames stay infatuated while she pumps up the competition? And is iJustine a strong enough commodity on her own to support a dedicated site? As her male counterpart Justin Kan can attest, achieving fame is no small task, but staying on top is a whole lot harder.

First there was angel investor Chris Yeh, who stepped in to guard his investment as CEO. Later, he gave way to Esurance founder and investor Chuck Wallace. "I give Ustream three months before it implodes," a tipster tells us. "The two founders have no Web experience, are money-hungry and think they are geniuses for taking [somebody elses]'s idea." Merriam-Webster couldn't have put it better.

Justine claims:

I never said I was leaving jtv.. so I'm not really sure where they got that info!