Watchtail

Watchtail was an artwork-centric video streaming site, similar to Livestream, Ustream and Justin.tv, with furries as its target audience. It allowed artists to stream live video of their drawing process, which had become a popular practice. Unlike the aforementioned competitors, which restricted streams to PG/PG-13 related material, Watchtail permitted adult rated content to be shown.

Like the other such websites, Watchtail featured a chat room alongside the video which allowed the audience to interact with the artist. It also provided artists with an area to link to their galleries, and to customize their user page. . The site did not overlay advertisements on video streams - instead, ad banners were presented at the bottom of each page.

Watchtail's mascot was Watchfox, a bluish-purple fox whose color was derived from the website's color scheme. Watchfox always appeared wearing a vest and tie, and carrying a pocketwatch. The markings on Watchfox's forehead were reminiscent of the letter "W." Watchfox was created by Nedded, the site's founder.

Watchtail was bombarded with trolls, and the site owner, Nedded, decided to redesign the backend security of the site. The trolls were successfully able to take control of every chatroom, bypass banning systems and ban any user they desired. This attack occurred more than once, pushing Nedded to continue to add more safety protocols to the site. This resulted in a general loss of popularity.

Streaming requires the transfer of large amounts of data, and its original server was closed, with plans to replace it with a co-located donated server, as well as a new interface and login system. These were never fully realised - increasing bandwidth/network transfer costs proved to be the main factor in its demise, with ~1.5TB+ used over six successive months. Lack of staff and relevant coding experience were contributing factors.