JenniCam
You might remember it as Jennifer Ringley webcam
The archive has not found a surviving copy.
1996·Early web, before YouTube
A website on which a student’s webcam showed her room, a still picture at a time, at all hours, for seven years.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- Jennifer Ringley webcam
- Spread in
- 1996
- Began as
- A web page
- Made by
- Jennifer Ringley, then a student at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania
- Recorded
- A still image every three minutes at first, later one a minute
- Origin
- Not an upload originally
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
Jennifer Ringley, a nineteen-year-old student at Dickinson College, pointed a webcam at her room and left it running. The site ran from 14 April 1996 to 31 December 2003. Before it, webcams watched coffee pots and car parks; this one watched a life, and millions of people a day watched back. The Museum of Modern Art included it in a 1999 exhibition.
Why it matteredWhat changed
Jennifer Ringley let strangers watch her ordinary life, which nobody had done on the internet before. At its peak the site was viewed millions of times a day.
TimelineIn order
- Made
The site is launched, eleven days after the camera is installed.1
- Later
Paid access is introduced, with pictures that refresh more often.1
- Mainstream
The site is included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.1
- Taken down
Ringley shuts the site down, citing a new PayPal policy against nudity.1
What people misrememberSet straight
Commonly remembered asThe first webcam.
ActuallyEarlier cameras showed fixed scenes, such as a coffee pot. Hers was the first to show somebody’s daily life.1
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · a moment that changed what the internet did next · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
This began as a web page, not as a video.
Where it came fromWhat we know
There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This began as a web page, not as a video.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things