Five Thoughts on Live Webcasting (and Soulja Boy)

Soulja Boy is certainly now etched into the history of the internet for sparking a “viral” video phenomanon with his little dance and he continues to be a viable recording artist and live performer.

Like a few other web pioneers (i.e. Snoop Dogg), Soulja Boy has been doing some live webcasting and is all amped up about having made the switch from the increasingly obscure justin.tv to the surging UStream.tv

Now, this is all well and good, but why are all of these celebrities wasting such a valuable opportunity on such terrible content?  Sure, it’s kinda fun to wake-n-bake with Snoop but the numbers don’t lie and neither Snoop nor Soulja seem to be attracting more than a couple hundred viewers for each live session.

This would be surprising until you see that there is nothing compelling about the content and even super-fans are quickly losing interest.

So, here are a few ideas for Soulja Boy, Snoop Dogg and any other celeb looking to really maximize live webcasting:

1) Get a decent webcam.  Honestly, there is no reason to look like a low-rent camgirl.

2) Have a real reason to go live.  Let your fans know that you’ll be singing parts of a new song or sharing some never-before-seen picture of you as a little kid.  Anything, really, that makes the live webcast an event.  It’s nice for it to be a small thing, geared toward super-fans but they need a reason to turn up.

3) If you are going to be live, engage your audience.  Answer questions.  Even better, ask questions.

4) Tell your fans that you will be calling one live viewer during your webcast.  They’ve got to be viewing you to be chosen.

5) Play some music live.  Seriously, you’re musicians, right?

Ashton, Snoop and Other Stars Hot on Live Webcasting. Why?

This has been a big year for live webcasts and especially for UStream, a site that seems to have a dominant position at the moment.

Live webcast’s big moment came late last year with the sensation that was the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam.  Tens of thousands of people were tuned in at any given moment to the six little puppies and it is thought that the total number of viewers was over 20 million.  Not bad for some puppies.

Now, it seems, live webcasting is moving beyond puppies and live camgirls to include a growing number of celebrities.  I’ve already discussed Snoop Dogg’s “Wake-n-Bake” show and Kevin Pollack’s chatter and now comes word that web-happy celeb Ashton “1 Million Followers” Kutcher has plans to do a live version of his chestnut “Punk’d” for UStream.

The question is, why this new interest in live webcasting?  It is hard enough to drum up an audience for an original webseries without the added pressure of forcing people to tune in at a specific time.  Even network TV is finding a drop in appointment viewing.

My minimal research (checking out each show a couple of times) indicates that only a few hundred people are interested in either Snoop or Pollack when they are live.  It will be interesting to see if Ashton has the kind of pull needed to make a live show a true hit on UStream or if the only thing we really want is more puppies.