Little Kids Love Live Video

There is a bunch of interesting data from the latest study from Nielsen Online (as highlighted by CNet).

First off, I am sort of amazed that the youngest category is 2-11.  Yup, 2-year-olds are watching web video.  How much?

“On average, the kids watched 51 video streams from home during April, spending almost two hours on video clips. That usage outstrips the average of nearly 75 million adults who regularly view video clips at sites like ESPN.com and CNN.com. On average in April, adults of voting age watched 44 video streams, for about 1 hour and 40 minutes of their time.”

Even more compelling, or as CNet puts it…

“Slightly disturbing, the site with the highest concentration of 12- to 17-year-olds, or 44 percent of this age group, was Stickam.com, a hub for live Webcams of people in their bedrooms. Atlantic Records and Epic Records were runners-up in that category.”

A tad sensationalist perhaps as a quick look at Stickam will show that the main reason for all the bedrooms is that’s where the kids have their computers and webcams.  It is not a seething hotbed of teen sex, as the media hopes/fears.

Instead, it is an interesting step for live video – something that older generations seem to shy away from.  The ability to do easy web-video chat has been around in one form or another for a while now and I see very little evidence of its adoption by the 30+ set.

Related articles

• Current Online Video Streams Up 50% in April, Nielsen [via Zemanta]

Leo Laporte Live-Casting All the Way to the Bank

Sources are reporting that web/tech personality Leo Laporte will be moving his popular video podcast “This Week in Tech” to the streamcaster Stickam.

Many were confused as to why Leo would make this move until it was discovered that Stickam was doing something most web video startups seem deeply averse to – they paid him.  Paid him to the tune of about $100,000.  Maybe not money you can retire on but it raises the bar for everyone else out there.

Buying talent has always been a smart move in the entertainment world and it is about time that it seeped into the realm of New Media.

Any web video site out there would be far better off going out an stealing top talent away from other sites with actual cold, hard cash than trying to develop something on their own from scratch and the free labor of the few followers they pick up along the way.