Curious about Yahoo!’s new live webcam chat service, I sat in on a short session hosted by Digg’s Kevin Rose, hoping to find fault with the service and gather plenty of ammunition info for a review.

I wasn’t disappointed, and immediately the bugs and frustrations began to appear.

I tried to set up my camera - no live feed, I tried to join a channel (a few actually) - error messages popped up, saying no video was available due to heavy traffic. Great start for a video site, however I was reassured that I could still chat by text in the mean-time. Big whoop.

When I finally got onto a channel, things got drastically worse; The uncomfortable monologue of Kevin Rose, trying to figure out why nobody could hear anyone else, set up their camera, or kick the idiot who insisted on spamming the chat with a relentless tirade of 24pt bright-green bullshit, all the while, about 70 frustrated faces appear and disappear from the channel as they try in vain to communicate.

I laughed. Hard. Then I threw my mouse across the room and gave up.

It’s not all bad, it looks nice, and the concept is good. Unfortunately, in their rush to launch the service, Yahoo! forgot to make sure it actually works, and the execution is nothing short of abysmal. A deeply embarrassing failure of epic proportions.