page_title: Webcam model
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Webcam model / Background
caption_attribution_description: Exxxotica NJ 2010 . Day Two
context_page_description: A webcam model is a video performer who is streamed upon the Internet with a live webcam broadcast. A webcam model often performs erotic acts online, such as stripping, masturbation, or sex acts in exchange for money, goods, or attention. They may also sell videos of their performances.
  Since many webcam models operate from their homes, they are free to choose the amount of sexual content for their broadcasts. While most display nudity and sexually provocative behavior, some choose to remain mostly clothed and merely talk about various topics while still soliciting payment as tips from their fans. Webcam models include "women, men, straight, gay, [and] trans" performers.
  Once viewed as a small niche in the world of adult entertainment, by 2016, camming became "the engine of the porn industry", according to Alec Helmy, the publisher of XBIZ, a sex-trade industry journal.
context_section_description: In 1996 an American college student and conceptual artist, Jenny Ringley, created a website called "JenniCam." Her web camera was located in her dorm room and automatically photographed her every few minutes. The camera captured Ringley doing almost everything – brushing her teeth, doing her laundry, doing stripteases – and then broadcast its images live over the Internet. Later in 1998 she divided her website's access into free and paying.
  Also in 1998, a commercial site called AmandaCam was launched. Amanda's site, like Ringley's, had multiple cameras around her house which allowed people to look in on her. However Amanda made an important early discovery that would influence the camming industry for decades to come – that a website's popularity could be greatly increased by enabling viewers to chat with a performer while online. Within her members section, Amanda made it a point to chat with her viewers for over three hours a day. Since the early days of live webcasts by Ringley and Amanda, the phenomenon of camming has grown to become a multibillion-dollar industry which has an average of at least 12,500 cam models online at any given time and more than 240,000 viewers at any given time.
caption: A model demonstrates web broadcasting with a video camera and computer at an industry trade show.
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