Release Notes On Live Video Platforms

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Last week did well and thanks for the wide response from everyone! I learned a thing or two from Jamie Wilkinson in his interview with me about how he measures his students grades in the class. Students are graded on how famous they get online! I applied a few ways a live broadcaster would analyze the features that enable growth like social networking, community and user generated content. I hate to use the over-used catch phrase. UGC refers to the community participation that creates culture. Culture change is unique to every blog and social network as time moves on and new technologies come along.

After consolidating data and consulting with my associates I came up with this chart that shows one of the most important parts of a live video on the internet. It’s social networking. The sites with the best design will likely foster a community that interacts with each other more. Live streaming is all about word of mouth and enabling users and life casters with the right tools to manage friends, favorites and followers may determine the companies success.

Quality of content is important to people who want to make quality content. Many companies like blip.tv pride themselves in having the best content and selling the best advertisements. Do content creators want tools to make their broadcasts better? For example, can the broadcaster pull in a friend from a different camera in a different geographic location? Is it possible to add your own branding.

Brand value is important when trying to scale. Being able to reinvent one’s self is what makes people stick around longer as leaders and trend setters.

Popularity not only applies to the vast audience visiting daily, but also to the number of people on the site and the monthly growth percentage. Stickam is by far the most popular in size and growth, however, Ustream and Justin are gaining quickly. Qik too has had a small growth over a short time frame as mobile phones that stream video become more accessible. YouTube doesn’t need to worry about audience size. Once they open up live streams to all we may see millions watching one person at the same time.

Some sites, like Yahoo for example, don’t understand the value of archives and simply don’t care to do anything about it. If we are interacting with each other by sharing our favorite highlights or remixing videos we are clearly integrating archive links that are enjoyable and valuable to our lives.

Here are the grades these sites get according to the data above:

ustream B+
justin B
blogtv.com C-
yahoo C+
mogulus C
Stickam A-
operator11 D-
liveuniverse C-

For the unofficial awards on the best all around live video platform, I have to give first place to Stickam, second place to Ustream and third place to Justin.tv.They are still working to make the technology better and I look forward to work with all platforms as they progress. May the race kick into full speed!