YouTube Live, Google’s live streaming platform, celebrated its first birthday over the weekend. To mark this event, YouTube is adding a number of new features to Live today. Most of these (new production software, improved publishing flows and real-time analytics) are mostly of interest to video producers. The most important new feature, though, is the addition of pay-per-view as a monetization option for all publishers. Until now, pay-per-view was only an option for select publishers who worked directly with Google. → Read More
IntercastNetwork is a rich-media interactive platform that allows brands to connect to audiences using a combination of live-streaming video, real-time polling, live chat, Q&A, payment processing and more. The resulting platform works well for live broadcasters, who can track audience engagement levels and feedback during in real-time, and adjust their message accordingly.
Unlike LiveStream, Justin.tv or UStream, for example, IntercastNetwork lets broadcasters and publishers push live video feeds, including those from outside sources, directly to their own website’s homepage or others’ sites, where branding, features and other platform components can be more directly controlled. → Read More
YouTube is testing out live video streaming with a few video partners today such as RocketBoom, Howcast, and Young Hollywood. Gathering a live audience on the Web to watch video is hard because there are no schedules and people are used to clicking on videos on their own schedule. But if anyone can make live video a mass market experience, it should be YouTube, right? Throw in a celebrity like skateboarder Tony Hawk and that should be a recipe for tens of thousands of viewers or more.
Well, Tony Hawk just finished an appearance on Young Hollywood right now, and the number of viewers never went above 500, according to the view counter at the bottom of the player. For most of the segment, it was much less—at one point I saw 9 viewers, then 81. As a point of reference, when we livestream TechCrunch events, we often get 2,000 to 3,000 concurrent viewers, and that is without being promoted on YouTube’s home page. So 500 viewers for Tony Hawk is really nothing. → Read More
Editor’s note: Michael Seibel is the CEO of Justin.tv, the largest live video site on the Web. In this guest post, he addresses the challenges of live video on the Web and how to set it free (hint: it’s all about mobile).
I spend a lot of time talking about the challenges that live video will face in growing from an intriguing group of startups to an obvious part of the everyday web experience. Nearly everyone assumes that business challenges are what we need to overcome—bandwidth costs, copyright protection, premium content rights or monetization. They are surprised when my answers are product-focused, not business-focused.
Problem 1: Availability. The first evolution of consumer live video creation came in one flavor: broadcast from a computer with a webcam. Unfortunately, the interesting things that happen when you sit in front of your computer screen are few and far between. Being tethered to a computer is the single biggest problem in live video today. People need to be able to create live video from anywhere. → Read More
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