As Big Brother draws to a close, where will the viewing public get their next voyeuristic fix from? The internet, of course.
I have been running a webcam site, UK Cam Girl, for more than a year now, but it has never been as popular as it is now. It has become the norm for workers to watch webcams in the office on those long, boring afternoons.
I was first introduced to webcams in 1998 when I shared a student house with a webcam enthusiast. A site was soon developed which involved having six cameras in the house.
Student House was an instant hit. Nothing like this had been done before, certainly not in the UK. The house now broadcasts from five webcams on the internet, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Having a webcam in my room as part of the Student House site soon made me realise how popular a Girl on a Cam can be. I have a group of regular visitors to my site who like to see what is happening in my life, how work went, or just to have a chat with someone who is going through the same experiences as themselves. I regularly update a journal which allows people to see what I am doing with my life, and also what I'm thinking, which is something that cannot be got from watching the cams.
I find myself competing against Cam Girls worldwide to get to the top of the Top 100 lists, specifically Top 100 Girls with Cams. A regular at the top of this list (and all the others!) is Aimee Live!. This site is the most popular non-commercial girl cam site. Here you'll find a wide selection of features, including her Freak of the Week section where she posts up weird emails that she has received.
Cam girls regularly receive abusive email from viewers. All email tends to arrive from men who do not understand that we are not there to perform for them. When we receive abusive email we notify other girls with cams to warn them that they could be the next target. We are a tight knit community which workstogether to bring new features to the viewers.
I do find it difficult when I read bad email about me. There have been times when I have wanted to turn the cam off and give up on the site. And running a popular webcam site has changed me as a person.
I was camera shy until I lived in the student house. Now I don't mind, within reason, what is caught on the camera. After all, I'm only being myself, and if people don't like that, I can't change who I am. In some ways I find people are invading my personal space, but I also enjoy the attention that I get from it. I tend to feel as if the people could be just walking past my house, and looking in through the window. I spend around 30 minutes a day updating my site and checking that everything is functioning as it should.
The cost of running my site is practically nothing these days. There has, of course, been the initial outlay for the cameras. I do make a small amount of money from my site, which helps to pay for the costs.
I first created my site with a Creative Labs Webcam II, but the quality of these images was not very good. I have now invested in a camcorder and a later model of the Webcam II. To allow people to view the cam pics I use a program called Webcam32, which updates the images from the cam on to the internet every 30 seconds.
Between 800 and 1,000 people visit my site every day. But I expect this to rise with the introduction of the new streaming cameras. The majority of the people who visit are from the US as they have better connections which allow them to view the cameras at a better speed.
After my mum saw my site, she started worrying that I was "in with the wrong crowd" and that I was portraying myself in the wrong light. My dad and friends understand why I'm doing it, however, and hope it will help me to get a job in the web industry due to my experience in creating popular sites.
I hope that in the future my site will contain more cams, and more than just my bedroom on cam. I also hope to create video archives for people to be able to see what I was doing on various days. I would like to receive more feedback from viewers about what they think of the site and why they return to it. I am curious as to what goes on in the minds of webcam viewers!
