Deanna O' Reilly
2003-12-08 00:37:22 UTC
Final Days in the Life At Jennicam
Sat Dec 6,10:01 PM ET
Add Technology - washingtonpost.com to My Yahoo!
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=1804&u=/washpost/20031207/tc_
washpost/a40647_2003dec6&printer=1
By Mike Musgrove
After seven years, it looks like former Washington resident Jennifer
Ringley is finally turning off the webcams.
Ringley, more famous as the woman behind Jennicam (www.jennicam.org),
became an Internet curiosity and a quasi-celebrity in the early days of
the Web by putting up cameras around her apartment and letting anyone
with an Internet connection tune in at any hour for a $15 annual
subscription.
An announcement on Ringley's site last week said that the Jennicam show
will close at the end of the year. But so far, the woman who shared
everything -- yes, everything -- about her daily life has not revealed
at her site why she's pulling the shutters. She did not respond to an
e-mail sent midafternoon Friday.
Online payment service PayPal could be one culprit. In October, Ringley
forwarded some of her subscribers an e-mail from PayPal telling her the
company had closed her account because its policy prohibits "the sale
of items for mature audiences" (patient viewers have been able to catch
the redhead in the altogether).
"They've disabled my account so I'm not able to accept subscriptions,"
she wrote in the e-mail. "I guess I've given up." A spokeswoman for
PayPal confirmed that the company had closed her account because of the
presence of nudity on the site.
Canadian Jennicam fan Paul Brown told The Post in an e-mail Friday that
he was sad to see Jennicam close.
"In a sense I'd like to have maintained the surveillance for the rest
of her life. . . . as a sociological experiment and a life-narrative
art project," he said. "I wish we'd been able to see it out."
At the peak of Jennicam's popularity, around the turn of the
millennium, Ringley told The Post that her site got an average of 100
million visitors a week.
Sat Dec 6,10:01 PM ET
Add Technology - washingtonpost.com to My Yahoo!
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=1804&u=/washpost/20031207/tc_
washpost/a40647_2003dec6&printer=1
By Mike Musgrove
After seven years, it looks like former Washington resident Jennifer
Ringley is finally turning off the webcams.
Ringley, more famous as the woman behind Jennicam (www.jennicam.org),
became an Internet curiosity and a quasi-celebrity in the early days of
the Web by putting up cameras around her apartment and letting anyone
with an Internet connection tune in at any hour for a $15 annual
subscription.
An announcement on Ringley's site last week said that the Jennicam show
will close at the end of the year. But so far, the woman who shared
everything -- yes, everything -- about her daily life has not revealed
at her site why she's pulling the shutters. She did not respond to an
e-mail sent midafternoon Friday.
Online payment service PayPal could be one culprit. In October, Ringley
forwarded some of her subscribers an e-mail from PayPal telling her the
company had closed her account because its policy prohibits "the sale
of items for mature audiences" (patient viewers have been able to catch
the redhead in the altogether).
"They've disabled my account so I'm not able to accept subscriptions,"
she wrote in the e-mail. "I guess I've given up." A spokeswoman for
PayPal confirmed that the company had closed her account because of the
presence of nudity on the site.
Canadian Jennicam fan Paul Brown told The Post in an e-mail Friday that
he was sad to see Jennicam close.
"In a sense I'd like to have maintained the surveillance for the rest
of her life. . . . as a sociological experiment and a life-narrative
art project," he said. "I wish we'd been able to see it out."
At the peak of Jennicam's popularity, around the turn of the
millennium, Ringley told The Post that her site got an average of 100
million visitors a week.