A couple of days ago we wrote about Facebook’s new Live Stream Box funtionality. Ustream was the first to offer a live video solution for users with Facebook Pages. But the sign up for the free option is limited, and the white-label version carries a one-time fee of $15,000. Enter Stickam. It’s offering live video via its StreamAPI service to anyone. And there’s no set up fee and no monthly fee. But it will still cost you.
The StreamAPI solution is pay-as-you-go, with live video costing you 45 cents a gigabyte. That includes support for HD video, customizable solutions (with no Flash knowledge required) and analytics. It’s a similar approach that Stickam takes with its regular StreamAPI product. → Read More
A lot of people don’t realize just how costly and bandwidth intensive streaming live video on the web is from a back-end perspective. There’s a reason YouTube hasn’t launched a live service and Yahoo had to shut its down. Most end users never have to deal with such concerns because they use a service like Ustream, Justin.tv or Stickam to handle their needs on a small level. But what if you have a startup or a company that wants live streaming to be a key part of your business? Then you may want to check out Stickam’s new StreamAPI.
StreamAPI is the white label version of a service Stickam’s been offering to several larger companies for a while now. While most startups probably won’t need to scale as big as an MTV-sized audience, there is still a need to have the appropriate resources to stream live to a large audience. StreamAPI can handle that while giving clients an easy to use, customizable interface and very low per-viewer hour stream rates. How low? Well, while Ustream may charge up to $1 per view hour, with StreamAPI, Stickam is willing to go as low as $0.05 per view hour (depending on quality). → Read More
Stickam, a live video streaming service that competes with the likes of Justin.tv and Ustream.tv, is releasing a new API that effectively allows anyone to build their own streaming video startup with a minimal amount of effort. The service is normally pay-as-you-go, but the first 100 users to sign up will be able to try it out for free.
StickamAPI allows developers to leverage Stickam’s infrastructure – which handles handles everything from actually hosting videos to bandwidth and streaming – to integrate video streaming into their own sites. While most video services have allowed users to create their own ‘channels’ (typically videos associated with a group or theme) and embed their videos wherever they’d like, the Stickam API allows for much deeper integration of live video streaming. → Read More
CrunchBase Information Justin.TV Ustream Stickam Mogulus Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Given all the chaos this week surrounding Microsoft’s bid to take over Yahoo, it’s not surprising that a new Yahoo product launch wouldn’t have an abundance of exuberance attached to it. Still, the only word anyone got that Yahoo Live has gone live is a three word post on Bradley Horowitz’s blog: “Live is live” (Horowitz is head of the Technology Development Group at Yahoo). Yahoo Live allows anyone with a webcam to stream live video of themselves to a dedicated site. They call it “a platform for live video.” It is very similar to existing live streaming services like Stickam, Justin.tv and Ustream and Blogtv. Users create a channel, authorize their webcam and start broadcasting to the public. Other people can drop by and watch, or choose to participate via video, sound or text chat. We’re still testing it, but for now the service is very unstable and keeps going down. It’s also clearly got a ways to go with features – videos are not archived for playback, for example, meaning once it’s broadcast live, that’s it. Users can set up profiles for themselves and track how many people have watched them stream live, how many broadcasts they have made, and how long total they’ve been on the air. When you’re in a streaming session with others, up to five other people can be shown on your screen at the same time, one of which is the main presenter and four others who are simply in the session. Everyone else can be seen in a chat room associated with the session, and these sessions can also be embedded around the web. Right now it looks as though Yahoo has hired two people – one of which is a girl who will sing songs on request – to help launch the site by providing some ongoing content. Yahoo has also set up a Twitter account that you can follow to see who’s streaming at a given time. Want to pull out information from Yahoo Live and access it elsewhere? There’s also an API available. Update: Yahoo’s Chad Dickerson responds below in the comments about the stability issue. CrunchBase Information Stickam.com Justin.TV Ustream blogTV Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
We’ve been following the evolving live streaming space for some time now. The success of recorded social video on the net (read YouTube acquisition) spurred on many more video startups, including a host of video sites hoping to find an equally large demand for live content. There are a bunch of them out there, including Ustream.tv, Stickam, Blogtv.com, Operator11, Mogulus, Veodia, and Justin.tv. Justin.tv, the first mobile lifecasting site, remained closed over the past couple of months as they experimented with the model. Today they’ve finally opened the site to anyone and partnered with On2 technologies for improved video compression. The new codec is supposed to deliver superior performance that yields higher quality video on a lower quality connection. On2′s benchmarks say their codec has a 30% performance improvement over the Sorenson video codec (commonly used in Flash and Quicktime) and it looks like Justin.tv’s streams are benefiting from it. So why the wait? Justin.tv originally started with a rather elaborate lifecasting model where anyone could stream their life on the go with a webcam and a laptop in their backpack. It did a great job of getting them a lot of press and into a great deal of mischief, but the hardware turned out to be too costly for the average user. Since then, the model has switched into kind of a MySpace for video casters. The site features an Apple “coverflow-style” directory of all the casters and list of top clips. Each caster gets an individually-stylized channel page with their own live cast, chat room, profile, twitter, and top highlights. They’ve also started adding professional content, like a behind the scenes cast of “One Tree Hill”. Viewers play judge and jury of the video streams, voting content for the clips they like to the front page of the site and casters seem happy to play along. As I’ve said before, I think the live streaming model has a lot of growing up to do before we see any stand out successes. There are several hurdles to mass consumption of the medium. User generated content is often not of the highest quality. Also, live streaming doesn’t lend itself to the same embeddable distribution model that made YouTube so successful since you don’t know what live content will show up (most sites have since tied in recorded video clips). Live streaming does shine when it comes to user interaction, which → Read More
Every parent’s worst irrational nightmare may finally have come true. According to report in the NY Times, popular live webcam streaming service Stickam is owned by pornographers. The report claims that Stickam’s parent company Advanced Video Communications is owned by Wataru Takahashi, “a Japanese businessman who also owns and operates DTI Services, a vast network of Web sites offering live sex shows over Web cameras”. The report quotes former VP of Stickam Alex Becker alleging that Stickam shares office space, employees and computer systems with pornographic Web sites. Of course, there is nothing wrong with owning a pornography business, but mixing that business with a service that has 600,000 users, many aged below 18, does raise some rather valid ethical and moral concerns. Would you let your child use Stickam knowing that it’s not only owned by a porn company, but allegedly is run by the very same folks, in the same office? → Read More
The growth of Youtube and its subsequent $1.65 billion buyout left behind a bevy of competing video sites. Since then competitors have been seeking to differentiate themselves by focusing on longer videos, higher (bitrate) quality videos, professional content, and paying their users. However, one of the more unique approaches to differentiation has been streaming live video over the internet. If social live video gets big traction down the road, it’s most likely going to be led by one of these startups: The oldest of the bunch, launching back in February of 2006, Stickam lets you host your own live show stream and chat on their site or embedded in your own. When your show isn’t live, you can show a pictures, audio, or recorded shows on a MySpace-like profile page. The front page of the site features the most recent show and their number of live viewers, which currently is floating around 3,000.Launched back in May, BlogTv also lets you start your own live show and chat. Every show you record is broadcasted live and then archived. You can subscribe to each show on your account, embed, rate, and recommend them. Live shows are shown on the front page, but you can also review the archived footage in their library. They just launched a new live embeddable player that lets you and a co-host stream a show with live chat directly from your blog.Yet to get out of private beta, Mogulus is focused on live video production tools. Using their tools, you can see how many viewers are waiting for your broadcast and storyboard the show you’re about to broadcast on your own Mogulus URL. With storyboarding, you can drop recorded videos into your feed at cue and even overlay graphics such as logos or titles. You can even collaborate with another producer and cooperatively shape the storyboard.The oddest of the bunch, Justin.tvlaunched with a splash and then again when police raided their apartment. The novelty of the site centered around one of the co-founders, Justin Kan, streaming his life 24/7 from a head cam. Justin.tv has yet to launch an open network, and has instead opted to expand slowly by adding a select number of dedicated “lifecasters”. Each caster gets a live feed, video archive, and chat channel. Instead of just featuring what’s live on the front page, they’ve also developed a “tips” service that lets users dig up → Read More
Stickam will launch tomorrow, February 15. The service allows users to easily create video and audio files, and additional tools to easily post these files to a website with a code snippet. The media files are played on the destination website in Flash. Bunchball has similar technology for integration of flash games into blogs and other websties. Stickam is free, has no bandwidth restrictions and up to 500 mb of storage. These are the kinds of tools that are already integrated quite nicely into sites like Tagworld. But if you are a more serious blogger and want to add just a bit of flair to your blog, Stickam may be for you. → Read More
