Tag Archives: time

YouTube and Implications of Live Video

RedOrbit reports about YouTube’s plans for live video, but most of the discussion since this Sarah Meyers Pop17 scoop (see below) has centered on the implications to networks.

Says RedOrbit: Back in February, US video blogger and self-styled chronicler of online celebrity Sarah Meyers sidled up to the YouTube founder, Steve Chen, at a New York party and secured something of a scoop. When asked by Meyers when YouTube was going to launch live video streaming, Chen said this had been a long-held ambition and one that was about to be fulfilled with the backing of his company’s deep- pocketed new owner. “Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do, but we’ve never had the resources to do it correctly,” he said. “Now with Google, we hope to actually do it this year.”

jetsons_l.jpgSarah was focused more on the possibilities of iJustine and other “famous” first adopters of posting their lives live. Then the media turned its curiosity to live television shows appearing on YouTube, which seems to miss the point entirely (especially since we’re all moving to time-shifted television, and the “live” notion seems to be important only when the content is live, or so important we’ll need it to survive the morning’s water-cooler conversation. There’s an irony here, not unlike this image from the Jetsons. While we could envision flying cars, we couldn’t quite conceive that a TV set might get bigger and actually not need antennas.

If done correctly, live YouTube video can have some fairly significant impact on personal communication, and radically change the way we interact remotely (kinda like the telephone did).

Chronic YouTubers routinely meet on Stickam, a site that allows people to meet in “rooms” or conduct live video shows — where select viewers can appear via video while the rest can interact via chat and messaging.

old_phone.jpgAd-supported live video streams could bring videoconferencing to the mainstream. It seems like just yesterday that I used a device and 56K modem so I could show my grandmother in New Orleans our newborn child (who is now almost 10). Now imagine a quick video call to with your teenager, where you can see their surroundings and ensure they’re sober. Could text messaging be a relic? Will a phone call some day seem as archaic as calling an operator to be patched to a neighbor?

Do you know I was invited to that NYC YouTube event in February, and bailed because I got swamped at the day job? Man do I have my priorities wrong. I would have so stalked Chen.

Is Yahoo TV Closing or Widening Chasm Between Online Video & Television?

Yahoo TV Verizon sponsoredWhich online-video site is mostly likely to be part of the bridge between television and the Internet? You can fault the model, and question it’s sustainability. But Yahoo TV is well poised to leverage its partnerships with Verizon and TiVo to start serving its bite-sized video content via television sets equipped with broadband boxes.

Take, for example, Yahoo TV’s “Prime Time in No Time,” a show hosted by Frank Nicotero that recaps the prior evening’s television shows. It’s interesting on at least two levels:

  1. It appeals to TV junkies. I’m not sure there’s a market for general prime-time recaps (since audiences tend to form around tighter niches). But it’s clearly targeted at TV viewers who maybe need some hand holding to start consuming via Yahoo’s mini-TV play. With some prime time promotion, I can see this audience growing.
  2. The ad model is interesting. Verizon gets a brief intro (not a preroll that I noticed), some banner wrap-arounds, and even a logo tucked nicely in the host’s corner frame. It’s dominant without being obtrusive.

Yahoo Menu No Amateur VideoSo we’re still in the infancy of the “TV and online video” collision, which is clearly going to take much more time than we hoped. I’m far less interested in television administered in once-a-day pills (instead of intravanious drips). I find the more fascinating side to be the amateur creators gaining broader exposure than they currently get (assuming they’re good enough, and have consistent content that appeal to steady audiences even if relatively small).

While YouTube is still better poised for the latter, Yahoo comes at the web more like AOL: looking more like TV on the computer than web video as most consume it now. So we see less and more polished content, but fairly superficial interaction between the content and its audience. It’s still “one to many” unlike the magic of online video “many to many” play.

It’s Amazon not eBay.

As an example, one of my few popular videos on Yahoo has 90K views but just 90 comments. While one in a thousand comment on Yahoo Video, most of my YouTube videos get 1-2 percent of viewers commenting. My Mac Air spoof got 27K views with 13 comments, while the same Mac Air spoof on YouTube got 374K views and 1564 comments.

Typically the initial online successes are “pure plays” and not an offline entity moving in. This is true with almost any industry: gaming, retail, travel and media. But it will take a few failures along the way. YahooTV is bringing TV and online video ever so slightly closer together — even if it ends up being a log over the river.

Note that Yahoo Video (the quasi amateur section) still exists, but it’s not part of the primary menu on Yahoo. In fact, I almost gave up in my search for it, so it’s not likely drawing in many Yahoo users (Alexa won’t let me isolate http://video.yahoo.com/ from Yahoo.com, so I don’t know how it’s fairing). The featured videos seem to get paltry views relative to YouTube features, and even the Yahoo Video Awards blog post has just 35 comments 4 days after announced (by contrast, most top 100 YouTubers get that kind of views and interactions within an hour of posting).

P.S. Updated 3/27: Check out what InsideOnlineVideo has to say about Yahoo.