People I would pay to life stream

I’ve been listening to the Penny Arcade podcast and it started me thinking about lifestreaming. There’s at least a few people I would pay if I could watch them stream their day over the net, either because they’re funny or interesting somehow. I thought about it a little bit, and here’s the list that I came up with:

Jonah Hill
Neil Gaiman
– Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik (from Penny Arcade)
Kevin Smith
Eddie Izzard
Chris Sacca
Jill Sobule
John Mayer
Felicia Day
Bruce Campbell
Sandra Day O’Connor

How about you? If you could pick a person and tune into their life as if it were a TV channel, who would you pick and why?

45 Responses to People I would pay to life stream (Leave a comment)

  1. The brilliant Stephen Fry. Fortunately for us he practically does it already through Twitter.

  2. God
    Santa Clause
    Matt Cutts

    πŸ˜›

  3. While not completly a life stream, you can stalt http://twitter.com/neilhimself and http://twitter.com/feliciaday

  4. You are my first person πŸ™‚
    And why – Who dont want to learn SEO from Google ?

  5. Dave (original)

    My kids so I could keep an eye on them.

  6. 1) Matt Cutts — all webspam team, all the time πŸ™‚

    2) Larry Page — thoughtful guy and the variety of interesting things he gets to see in any given day is amazing

    3) Barack Obama — just imagine the one day when someone slips information about UFOs. It would make all of the boring Senate luncheons worth it.

    4) Jon Stewart — 24 hours a day of the daily show interviews

    5) Bill Gates (today when he’s doing his foundation work, not from 10 years ago) — a technologist and successful business person thinking about things like basic health education or poverty. It’d be really interesting to see how he thinks about these global problems.

  7. Well.. I would like to watch President Obama (www.whitehouse.gov) – actually not so mutch to see how he handles big discissions, but more to see how everyday things comes along and how is in these situations…

    “Hey Barack, we’re out of milk for the kids – please go get some”.. “NO way, we have people for that now!”

  8. Terry Pratchett. My favourite author, and a deeply funny man. πŸ™‚

  9. Hello Matt,

    I am surprised, you haven’t included my name in the list πŸ™‚

    Anyway, I would love to watch:

    Shawn Wayans: imdb.com/name/nm0915465/

    Marlon Wayans: imdb.com/name/nm0005541/

    Johnny Knoxville: imdb.com/name/nm0424216/

    There are many more. These people are funny. What ever they do, they make you laugh. So I would like to enjoy a full day of some comedy.

    Wait a minute. How about the life of a Google Engineer on working days [not on week ends]. That way, I may find the secrets of Google Algorithm.

    Wow great idea. Matt, please tell me, how this is possible? Where I have to pay? And how much? And to whom? Is this some new Google feature? πŸ™‚

    Regards

  10. Most certainly

    Eddie Izzard
    Robin Williams

    and right now Gretchen Moll πŸ˜‰

  11. I’d definately agree with the Kevin Smith recommendation… such a smart and clever person would undoubtedly be a benefit to others. Having a glimpse into the life of Smith would show some the methods to his madness (a good thing).

  12. Britney Spears. It’s hard to turn away from a car wreck.

  13. Jade Goody!

    Oh wait…

  14. me? Seth Godin would be a nice guy to watch too…

    πŸ™‚

    Jim

  15. Randall Munroe

  16. A quick survey of my fellow SEOGroup staff has resulted in:

    Tina Fey
    Another vote for Kevin Smith
    Jonah Hill
    Anthony Bourdain
    M.I.A.
    and last but not least,
    Charles Barkley (you just know Sir Charles would come up with some entertaining tweets).

  17. No one. I don’t understand the fascination with watching other people in their day-to-day lives. Has anyone watched someone else on their webcam? For the most part, it’s incredibly boring.

    Turn on webcam.
    Wave hi to the other person.
    Type to the other person.
    Stare at monitor waiting for response.
    Type again to other person.
    Stare at monitor waiting for response.
    LOL without actually LOLing.
    BRB to go to bathroom or get a drink.
    Leave other person to watch the paint dry on the wall behind the webcam.
    Come back.
    Type some more.
    Wait.
    And so on and so on.

    Not exactly riveting drama.

  18. ‘LOL without actually LOLing.”

    That made me almost actually LOL πŸ˜€

  19. You

  20. Matt very interesting list and I’m surprised by the celebrities – but you get to be and hang out with a lot of the big thinkers in the course of a normal day.

    I’d like to have an eavesdropping bot right there in the Googleplex to tune into chats. Marissa Mayer / You / Brian W (search quality) all deal with really interesting problems and I would promise to keep all the algorithm secrets secret : )

    Tho I think my top choice would be Ray Kurzweil – he leads a very interesting life and seems to intersect with the most provocative ideas in the world on a regular basis.

  21. Matt, something unrelated, have you seen this:

    http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/goldkit/reputation.shtml

    I was told that the second consumer site in question is Rip-off Report. If you look at this page:

    http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/279/RipOff0279115.htm

    you can clearly see that they updated the page to put a more positive spin on it – something that they *never* do.

    (btw +1 for Eddie Izzard lifestream)

  22. Bono
    Richard Branson

  23. Osama Bin Laden, I can tell everyone where he is hiding.

  24. >> Bruce Campbell

    “Give me sugar, baby”. Legend

    And Kevin Smith during the “PrinceWorld” episode for sure… Probably not so much some of the rest of the time

    One to add : Peter Molyneux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux) – Gaming pioneer, and general genius

  25. I second Seth Godin.
    I would also love to see how Warren Buffett rolls.

  26. Anyone whom I respect enough to become interested in their lifestream has a bit of mystery about them. Lifestreaming may likely erase that mystery; then they would not be as interesting.

    I think Neil Gaiman achieves a nice balance between Twitter and his blog. Any more would threaten to make the relationship less special.

  27. Oh Dave… that was deep! haha

    Personally I’d love to stream Ricky Gervais… I love his humor on stage and he’s even more of a kid when he’s not on there!

    One day watching him would leave my jaw aching and my stomach hurting from the constant laughter!

    Oh and if Gervais couldn’t make my slightly weird obsession of wanting to watch him 24 hours a day I would settle for Dave Chappelle!

    -Jordan

  28. George Bush
    Man… think about it!

    W
    ..
    ..
    πŸ™‚ that would have some LIO & LOL moments πŸ™‚ for sure

    Ricky Gervais… that guy never stops and he’s hilarious.

  29. How would you find the time to watch 12 people’s lives in real time? Wouldn’t you need an excellent editing team to notice and alert you of great moments?

  30. I would go for Lance Armstrong.

    I dont think this is too far fetched as we already can tell what tons of people do by following on Twitter etc.

    Scares the shit out of me to be honest!

  31. Putin, Hu Jintao, Manmohan Singh, Obama, and of course Matt Cutts.

  32. I agree with both Bruce Campbell and Jill Sobule since they are two of the most entertaining people on the planet. Yet I am friends with Jill on Facebook and suspect that it might end up being me watching TV of Jill watching TV… Now if I could hear her interior monologue of that, wow.

  33. Hmm. I would like to see how Warren Buffett rolls. Good call on Ricky Gervais, too. I like the “Obama, so I can see where he is” suggestion too.

    To the people that were nice enough to say me, thanks, but I think you’d find it colossally boring most of the time. πŸ™‚

  34. Dave (original)

    IMO, if anyone wants to watch someone’s elses life, they need to get their own. Bit like Big Brother viewers

  35. Well, I already life stream you πŸ™‚

    Other people I might find interesting to have (aside from search stuff) – let me see:

    – Bruce Schneier
    – Bruce Perens
    ack, before I turn all Monty Python…
    – Vint Cerf
    – Barack Obama, maybe?

  36. “To the people that were nice enough to say me, thanks, but I think you’d find it colossally boring most of the time.”

    I wouldn’t mind less information about bacon polenta, daffodils and cats in my RSS feed reader πŸ™‚

  37. Yay for Eddie Izzard!! I would definitely tune into his life! πŸ™‚

  38. Michelle Obama – I love that woman. Power at its finest.

    Bill Slawski – Cause I’m dying to see how he keeps track of records, and evaluates all of these search engine patents. (SEO by the Sea)

    Patent Office – See who and what is going across the desk.

    Rand Fish of course, because I love SEOmoz.

    Sometimes I think it’s better not to REALLY know what my kids are doing…so maybe I shouldn’t follow them…I like my rose colored glasses…

    Back to work..thanks for the break!

  39. P.S. I’d pick Thurgood Marshall over Sandra Day O’Connor. Except Thurgood Marshall is dead so it would be boring to follow him now. I read Sandra Day O’Connor’s biography. Made me not like her so much.

  40. Stephen Fry – such an inspiration.

  41. Matt,

    Good question, Matt. Here is a

    John Doerr
    Scott A Jones
    Kevin Rose
    Jason Calacanis (I just want a ride in the Tesla)
    Dean Kamen
    Jimmy Wales (late night viewing only)

    The celebrity thing is kind of funny. We want to peer into their world, but I think that we would find the most of them are such blow hard narcissists that it would be unbearable. We are viewing them the way their publicists want us to see them.

  42. Sergey Brin
    Mark Zuckerberg
    President Obama
    Michael Bay
    Shia LaBeouf

    Here’s my list.

  43. If I could only pick one, I’d have to say my Dad. My Dad is not only my closest friend, but also my ‘unpaid consultant’ in matters of love, life, money and career. Not a day goes by when I don’t feel lucky to have been raised by someone like him!

  44. Dave (original)

    Greg, that’s a great post and statement.

  45. Glad to see you’re a big PA fan Matt! I used to watch Tycho’s live video stream of him drawing the comic every chance I could get.

    As for people who have good lifestreams, the best are invariably people who both have great talent finding interesting things to link as well as great control over how that information is presented. I’d say Louis Gray does a great job of this in the social media sphere, there’s a number of great lifestreamers on FriendFeed and folks like Warren Ellis and John Hodgeman in the entertainment field.

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