ambrosia_R

I don't think Jennicam was a portal. I think it was just her own platform (correct me if I'm wrong). Sunny and the rest of us were part of a cam portal, which really became quite a phenomenon in and of itself.

Camwhores had a main page, with a live chat module that was constantly going. There'd be a few of the cams at the top of the screen -- in order of whichever was most recently updated, with the prime first spot automatically given to anyone who was doing a members-only show -- and then the chat screen would just scroll up as everyone contributed. And the chat was quite lively. There were always a ton of people active on it. We all got to know each other quite well. I imagine most people would be surprised at just how friendly and respectful the chat was on a site called "camwhores".

We also had the option of adding a caption directly into our uploaded image. Until a camgirl was a full member, they didn't have access to the actual chat -- it was a probationary period -- and we'd respond to chat questions by uploading pics with our responses embedded in the picture. Which did make the back-catalog of a given camgirl's pics a little obscure, sometimes, as obviously there was no link to the chat from the response in the picture.

Does anyone remember the "camgirl head-tilt"? :P

I had a weird situation. Some random dudes from my high school recognized me and posted some messages to the little free site I'd put a few black and white arty "quasi-nude" pictures up on. Very "we know who you are!! hahaha you're the nerd [my name] [the bizarre nickname they'd come up with]" immature nonsense. Part of me was a little thrown off...but the rest of me thankfully didn't need to care too much about some random douchebags from my nerd days in high school. In fact, I kind of felt a little pleased that they were seeing the evidence of the physical growth I'd had in the previous couple of years. (I got hot. I had kind of a "ha, you n00bs. I'm way out of your league now so go ahead and take refuge in being stuck in 17-year old stoner boy mode" moment.) Other people really didn't know much about it. A handful of close friends from high school knew about the camming, and I think they were a little confused as it was in such opposition to my personality back in high school, but other than that I pretty much escaped a lot of the horror stories you hear about.

I remember being given the option of switching to streaming video and thinking "...no, I don't think that's going to be a doable platform for some time." And then seeing the "video" cams on the portal in all their laggy glory. It just seemed like there was already way too much visual noise on the site even with all our still cams; I didn't see how a bunch of video cams would ever actually work on one page.