Ok, I was having a conversation the other day with a friend when the name Dom DeLuise came up. That, of course, led to a discussion of the much-loved Burt Reynolds’ starrer CANNONBALL RUN.
Just a day later I read the following on Mashable:
“There have have been a number of races to succeed the original Canonball run. The latest one is another brainchild of Brock Yates. And this time, the driving revolution will be televised (on the intarwebs, at least). The One Lap of America folks have discovered the magic of wireless broadband access and UStream, and will be bringing you the race live from their dashboards, so you can experience the wonder and beauty of a six day cruise across the America.”
Sounds good to me!
SAI has some numbers on the users and viewers of the many free live-streaming options that have been popping up and sucking up VC rather rapidly.
Turns out the numbers are quite equaling the investment, yet.
“The biggest site, LiveVideo, had 1.13 million unique viewers in February, according to Nielsen’s VideoCensus. That’s enough to earn it 49th on Nielsen’s list of top video sites — and to beat Sony’s Crackle (nee Grouper). But it drops off dramatically from there.
Second-place streamer uStream, supposedly a Microsoft buyout candidate, ranks 142nd among the top video sites. That puts it between iVillage Network (141st) and one above Atom Films (143rd), in terms of unique viewers of video. And Justintv, the supposedly redhot home of iJustine? Just 82,000 unique viewers, Nielsen says — enough to earn it #369.”
This isn’t especially surprising to anyone who has spent time watching the average live-stream. Like most of the videos on YouTube, it isn’t that interesting. And, unlike the video’s on YouTube, these “broadcasts” never really end.
Sure, there are some exceptions and it is here that we will begin to see some growth. The first issue is figuring out what NEEDS to be live. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Think how few things are actually live on TV.
The news. Morning shows. Sporting events. SNL. That’s about it aside from the rare stunt programming. As the tech gets better and the streams get more clear sports will be a big part of the live-streaming world – look how well CBS did with their live NCAA games. I’ve even heard anecdotal reports of people “broadcasting” sporting events of their own tv, via webcam, to the web for those who can’t get it in their region.
Tags: cbs, ijustine, live, livevideo, ncaa, pop17, snl, streaming, ustream, video, youtube
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March 31, 2008 2:56 pm | 
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NewTeeVee has some very compelling news from live video streaming site UStream:
“The live video site will allow its users to collaborate with the possibility to mix multiple video feeds in real time. Users can either interact with each other to create a kind of live talk show or import other Ustream feeds picture in picture.
“This is a pretty cool step towards everyone who wants one having their very own live TV studio. Look out world, here comes the world.
Ever since Pop17 broke the news that YouTube was going to be getting in on the Livecasting business, there’s been lots of talk about what might happen to the existing players (justin.tv, mogulus, ustream, etc).
Valleywag has a few responses from those players and they certainly put up a brave front. The general consensus is that if/when YouTube makes their move, they’re going to take over the marketplace much like they have for UGC video in general.
My question is, does Livecasting really matter? We’ve just spent the past few years falling in love with TiVo and DVR’s that mean we never have to put up with pre-determined schedules. So why does anyone think that people are suddenly going to flock to livecasts online? We already have all sorts of live video conferencing but Livecasting is about one-way video, not chat.
I can see why folks might “tune in” for live sports events (like what g0211.com is doing) but not for the sorts of things we are already recording off the TV.
A few months ago there was a big kerfuffal over at the link-aggregater DIGG. I won’t go into the details of that event. I’m not really that interested in why the users were upset but I am totally impressed with DIGG’s response. As reported by Mashable:
“…arrangements were made for a quarterly show, of sorts, to be conducted in a Town Hall styling. Questions and interaction will take place between Jay, Kevin and the general userbase of Digg that will take place regularly (the exact frequency has not yet been nailed down any more specifically than every ‘three to four months‘). ”
DIGG will be using the site UStreamTV to host the meetings. Not only does this say to its users that DIGG actually cares but it’s neat to see them using other cool internet technology to meet everyone’s needs.
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