Six Puppies, 773 Viewer-Years, and the Night NBC Went Live

“Make us a household name.”

That was the assignment Brad Hunstable gave me when he hired me to do PR for Ustream.

Brad was Ustream’s co-founder and CEO. I worked directly with him and later with Casey Jorgensen, who came aboard to lead marketing. I was an outsourced PR person working remotely from Southern California while much of the company was based in San Francisco.

Brad told me that one reason he hired me was my tenacity.

I had been persistent about getting him to sign the contract, pay me $4,000 a month, and let me work on a project I knew would be fun. I had recently worked on stories including One Red Paperclip and the World Series of Poker Robots. Both had shown me what could happen when an unusual internet idea met an easy-to-understand story and relentless media outreach.

Brad wanted me to turn that persistence outward.

He wanted attention. Lots of it.

Then six puppies appeared on Ustream.

When livestreaming still needed an explanation

In 2008, livestreaming wasn’t a standard button on every social platform. People understood television. They understood recorded internet video. The idea that almost anyone could turn on a camera and broadcast live to the world still felt new.

Ustream was helping create that world.

The platform had already carried political events, technology coverage, weddings, personal broadcasts, and other live moments. But many of those examples still required an explanation of why live internet video mattered.

Six Shiba Inu puppies required no explanation at all.

I regularly communicated with Matt Schlicht and Mazy Kazerooni, who were working on Ustream’s product and growth efforts. We were always watching for interesting new streams that appeared on the platform.

One day, we noticed a camera pointed into a puppy pen.

There were two or three viewers. Then five or six. The number wasn’t enormous, but people kept watching.

The stream showed six newborn Shiba Inus named Autumn, Ayumi, Amaya, Aki, Akoni, and Ando. They slept in a pile. They climbed over one another. They chewed, stretched, fought, played, and waited for their mother, Kika, to return.

It was incredibly simple and almost impossible to stop watching.

We started sharing the puppies

We began wondering what would happen if the early internet’s pet sites, cute-animal blogs, and novelty publishers found the stream.

I started sharing it with them.

The initial pitch didn’t need much embellishment: there were six ridiculously cute puppies on camera, live, all day. You could look into the pen at any moment and see what they were doing right then.

That word, live, made the experience different.

This wasn’t a polished compilation of cute moments. There was anticipation. The puppies might all be asleep, or their mother might enter the pen and instantly wake everybody up. You could leave the stream running and wait for something to happen.

People did exactly that.

The stream began appearing on websites and spreading among coworkers. We heard about companies putting it on large screens so an entire office could watch together. The Puppy Cam became part entertainment, part background television, and part collective stress relief.

A November 2008 CNN broadcast described it as a live, 24-hour Puppy Cam and reported that more than two million people had already watched.

TechCrunch paused its usual technology coverage to share it.

The following day, The Guardian called it “the latest internet sensation” and counted more than 2.4 million views.

CNN returned to the stream again, ending another broadcast by checking in on the six puppies.

The numbers kept climbing.

The live embed helped the story travel

One of the most important parts of the campaign was the ability to place the Ustream player on other websites.

Around this time, Ustream was building its live-player embed capabilities. That meant a publisher could place the Puppy Cam directly inside an article or blog post. A reader didn’t have to leave the page, find Ustream, locate the channel, and then press play.

The live experience came to them.

That was a major growth idea for Ustream. Every embedded player could create another active viewer and introduce a new audience to the platform through content they already wanted to see.

My role was to give publishers a reason to use it.

The puppies were the perfect reason.

Every article, blog post, email, office screen, and embedded player expanded the audience. The growing audience then gave us a bigger number and a stronger story to pitch to the next outlet.

The product powered the story, and the story demonstrated the product.

Waiting for NBC Nightly News

By Nov. 14, 2008, I knew there was a chance the Puppy Cam would appear on NBC Nightly News.

I told people to watch.

Then I sat through the broadcast and waited.

The news went on. The minutes passed. I was holding my breath because I had told so many people that I thought the story was going to happen.

And then, at the very end of the program, NBC went to the puppies.

That was the perfect place for the story. The Puppy Cam had already become one of the internet’s favorite distractions. Now one of the country’s biggest evening newscasts was closing by inviting its audience into the same live puppy pen.

Brad had asked me to make Ustream a household name.

Watching Puppy Cam reach NBC Nightly News felt like an enormous exclamation point on that assignment.

The next day, the story continued on NBC. Ustream founders John Ham and Brad Hunstable appeared on Today, and the program published “Puppy cam: latest Internet sensation”.

This was the moment when a small stream discovered on a growing video platform became national news.

Fifteen million views and 773 viewer-years

By December, the Puppy Cam had accumulated more than 15 million views.

Even more remarkable was the amount of time people spent watching it.

Business Insider reported 773 viewer-years across the live stream and recorded videos. That is the equivalent of one person sitting in front of the puppies for 773 years.

A week later, Wired reported that the total had grown to approximately 790 viewer-years. Even while the puppies were being adopted and leaving the pen, the stream was still drawing between 5,000 and 10,000 simultaneous viewers.

The phrase “viral video” usually makes us think of a quick clip that people watch and share. Puppy Cam behaved differently.

People stayed.

They watched the puppies sleep. They waited for Kika to return. They checked on particular puppies. They kept the stream open in offices. They returned the next day.

That time spent was evidence of an emotional relationship with a live story.

Why the puppies mattered in 2008

Context matters.

The Puppy Cam broke out in November 2008. The global financial system was in crisis. Companies were cutting jobs, markets were falling, and the Great Recession was beginning.

The internet was also exhausted from a long presidential campaign. TIME’s headline captured that mood with “Puppycam: For When You’re Sick of Politics.”

People needed a break.

The Los Angeles Times later described Puppy Cam as the talk of cubicle workers. The stream offered a small window into a world where nothing was collapsing. Six puppies were warm, safe, fed, and tumbling over one another.

Years before “comfort content” became a familiar phrase, millions of people found it in a live puppy pen.

The cultural timing helped the story grow, but the feeling was real. People weren’t only curious about the technology. They felt better when they watched.

NBC came back for another litter

The original story had enough staying power that NBC Nightly News returned when the San Francisco family welcomed another litter.

In the later NBC Puppy Cam report, Brian Williams introduced the stream as something with “the addictive power of a narcotic.”

NBC correspondent Mike Taibbi explained that Puppy Cam had surpassed 27 million visitors. The report also looked back at the original phenomenon, telling viewers that four million people in 74 countries had watched more than 1.2 million hours during its first week.

NBC explicitly connected the stream’s original popularity to the economic collapse. Psychotherapist Jonathan Halpern described it as free, calming, and an escape from the stress of life. Taibbi said that approximately 15 million viewers had found “a morsel of innocence and optimism” in the original litter.

Then Brian Williams ended the broadcast by inviting viewers to try it for themselves, adding a warning about how addictive it could be.

Watch: NBC Nightly News returns to the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam

That follow-up showed that Puppy Cam had become more than a successful news cycle. The audience remembered it. NBC remembered it. When the puppies returned, the story returned with them.

From an internet hit to an enduring community

The Puppy Cam continued through additional litters, and viewers became a community. Regulars referred to themselves as “Shibaholics.” People followed individual puppies, discussed what was happening in the pen, and returned as the canine family grew.

In 2011, NBC Bay Area reported that the returning Puppy Cam had accumulated more than 26.5 million views.

The audience also turned its affection into support for Shiba Inu rescue organizations. Calendars, cards, and other Puppy Cam projects helped connect the attention to fundraising.

The project’s influence traveled into awards and entertainment. In 2009, the Shiba Inu Live Puppy Cam won the public vote for Viral Video at the Webby Awards. The official Webby announcement placed it alongside some of the year’s defining online entertainment and reported that more than 500,000 votes had been cast across the People’s Voice Awards.

Wired also reported the Webby victory, calling out Puppy Cam as the popular choice for Best Viral Video.

The owners had originally turned on a camera to watch their puppies. Viewers turned it into a daily ritual. Ustream helped turn it into a worldwide live experience.

Puppy cams never really went away

The technology surrounding live video has changed completely since 2008.

Going live is now built into the largest social platforms. Creators broadcast from their phones. News happens in real time across dozens of services. People routinely watch wildlife cameras, nesting birds, aquariums, shelters, zoos, and animals being born.

The basic appeal of Puppy Cam remains.

In 2025, the National Park Service announced the return of its own Denali Sled Dog Kennels Puppy Cam, introducing another litter to viewers around the world. ABC News covered the new stream with an invitation to “get your daily dose of cuteness”.

These newer puppy cameras did not need to teach audiences what a livestream was. By then, everybody understood the format.

In 2008, that understanding was still being formed.

The Shiba Inu puppies helped teach it.

The best product demonstration didn’t look like one

Puppy Cam worked because it made new technology feel instantly familiar.

Livestreaming could have been explained through bandwidth, video players, broadcasting tools, and technical specifications. The puppies let people experience its appeal for themselves.

They showed that live video could create anticipation.

They showed that an ordinary household could broadcast to the world.

They showed that people would keep a live stream running for hours.

They showed publishers why an embedded live player mattered.

They showed news organizations that an internet stream could become a national cultural story.

Most of all, they gave millions of people a reason to care about what was happening right now.

That remains one of the most useful lessons from my career in PR: sometimes the story that explains a technology best has almost nothing to do with explaining the technology.

Find the thing people already want to watch, understand, discuss, or share. Help them experience it. Make it easy for the story to travel. Then keep pushing when the audience tells you that you have found something special.

In our case, it began with two or three viewers and six sleeping puppies.

It ended with millions of people watching, 773 viewer-years of attention, a Webby, and Brian Williams telling America that Puppy Cam could be addictive.

That was Ustream becoming part of the culture.

And that was the job Brad hired me to do.

I’m Evan White, a PR and marketing strategist who has spent more than 20 years helping internet companies, technology brands, and founders turn interesting ideas into stories people remember. Explore more of my projects and PR case studies, or contact Evan White PR to talk about the story your company should be telling.