Justin.tv Redesigns To Make Broadcasting Easier And Chat More Obvious

live-broadcast1There’s a lot of live video streaming competition out there right now, but Justin.tv remains the biggest (though Ustream says that’s up for debate). And it’s looking to hold that lead with a redesign launching today, along with some new features.

The new site has an overall cleaner and simplified look. And simplification is the key to another big change: The addition of big front page broadcaster. When you first load up the site you will see front and center a large video player with the phrase “Live broadcasting in one click.” If you click on the big red button below it, you’ll load up your camera options screen, where you pick a camera to record from. From there you can log-in or create an account to start broadcasting.

Previously, you had to log-in or set up an account first and could then start recording on a different page. This new way makes it much more obvious how to get recording right away.

justintv-buddy-listAnother change is the addition of a Meebo IM chat bar to each page on the site. Previously, chat only existed in channel chat rooms, but now the Meebo bar will allow you to continually chat no matter where you are on the site. Justin.tv says it’s the first live video site to use the Meebo bar, and has already seen 10% of its chat messages coming through as IMs, rather than in the chat areas on channels. That’s about 600,000 IMs out of 6 millon messages a day, we’re told. Expect that number to go up now that it’s sitewide.

As I said, Justin.tv remains the top live streaming site, but its competitors have all been making moves recently to try and spur usage. One big move was Mogulus recently rebranding to Livestream. Traffic to all of these sites across the board seems to be slipping. But when Ustream launched a redesign a year ago, it helped kick start growth.

Justin.tv just launched its Camtweet, live video on Twitter service, last week at our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp. This new simplified Justin.tv main experience, seems like an extension of the idea of simplicity, which I like. Justin.tv also launched a DVR feature last month.

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