

YouTube is going Live - Uncle_Sam
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/04/youtube-is-going-live.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+youtube%2FPKJx+%28YouTube+Blog%29

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dangero
This is an obvious thing for them to do, but the surprising part about it to
me is that half the time youtube is too slow to play a video clip I choose.
It's very unreliable, so it will be interesting to see how well the streams
work.

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jrsmith1279
Have you ever noticed that you never have a problem playing ads, but yet the
video following the ad doesn't work half the time? That's one thing that's
irked me about youtube for a while.

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JshWright
The ad is likely being served by a CDN server much closer to you than the
server the video itself is coming from.

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baddox
And the bitrate of the advertisements is always very low.

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kalleboo
What's interesting is that they're still only opening it for "partners", so
they're not quite taking up the fight with Ustream, justin.tv or Niconicodouga
yet.

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MatthewPhillips
Think if someone live streamed a suicide or some other horrible thing. On
Justin.tv, Ustream that would be horrible enough, but on YouTube it would be a
whole other level. I'm surprised it hasn't happened on one of those sites yet
actually.

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TillE
You can't make policy based on the worst possible circumstances.

Streaming video sites are already used for pornography, rebroadcasts of live
TV, etc. It hasn't really hurt them.

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MatthewPhillips
YouTube's on a completely different scale. The public and regulators would go
apeshit on Google. "We did the best we could" won't cut it.

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magicalist
people also upload really terrible stuff right now, and it seems to be flagged
quickly enough (though not quickly enough for Italian judges).

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joebasirico
I'm sure there is a market for this, but it's not me or my demographic.
Technical hurdles aside, I tend to trend away from most "live" events. I like
the idea of live breaking news. For most things, however I'd rather have them
on demand. This is one of the reasons why my wife and I recently canceled
cable for Hulu, Netflix and other on demand services.

I don't see myself structuring my day around "Wheezy Live On Youtube"

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slouch
I agree. I saw ThisWeekIn is scheduled to stream This Week in Startups on
Tuesday. I watch the show, but never live.

However, I read rumors on reddit a few weeks ago about YouTube trying to offer
NBA and NHL games via live streams. Sports are a different story, for me, and
I am willing to pay for access to NHL games. NHL's GameCenter has blackout
restrictions that eliminate it as a cable subscription replacement. I know
Google won't have that sort of crap, so I'm hopeful for YouTube Live Sports.

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colinsidoti
Startup Idea - Live streaming where people say what they're going to do, then
collect money in escrow before they actually do it. IE: I'll try and do a
standing long jump over these ten people if I collect $20.

If they succeed, they get the money. If not, the money get's returned.

Other use cases could be people constantly streaming and having a "hat out" to
"throw money" in, akin to street performers.

Crowdsourced, streaming entertainment.

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ernestipark
Cool idea, but I can see it quickly spiraling into -- "watch me jump off my
roof and most likely miss this trampoline and hurt myself terribly for $10".

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jrockway
I doubt it. It will probably quickly spiral towards "watch me take my clothes
off".

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jmathai
Would love to hear thoughts from the uStream/Justin.tv folk.

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unreal37
This might affects uStream. It won't affect Justin.tv.

Youtube is only allowing "approved partners" stream video - like NBC, CBS,
ABC. For now, it's not some guy live streaming his world of warcraft campaign.

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c2
Unfortunately for Justin.tv, those 'approved partners' is also likely the key
players where the money is for live events (Olympics, sporting events, etc.).

Starcraft/WoW matches and such will only be so popular.

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emmett
Care to place a specific upper bound on "so popular"?

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c2
Top 500 web site vs. Top 50

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ajays
Once again, Yahoo was ahead of the curve by 3 years:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Live>

(the other recent example being Instant Search).

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spoiledtechie
Thats the problem with Yahoo. Never enough PR for what they create. If they
want something done, you have to publicize it. Sadly, Yahoo is on a downward
spiral.

People always asking, what do they do again? They are nerds, but sadly too
much management and not enough PR.

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ajays
I think they may have been a bit ahead of the time here.

One problem with Yahoo is that they aren't able to lay out a vision: here's
something cool, and here's why you will like it. Steve Jobs is the gold
standard here, of course.

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mkramlich
It's extremely rare that I need to see video of some impersonal event on the
web "live". Probably the only situation where that might be useful is for some
super critical political or disaster event (9/11, announcement from alien
battleship in sky, etc.), and even that is pushing it. Pretty much everything
can be canned, "tape delayed", edited, cached, etc. and then time-and-device
shifted to fit my schedule and preferences.

For live personal video needs, there's always Skype video calls.

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silvestrov
They should definitely fix the timezones. Google already know which timezone
I'm in (from the ip address, should allow manual override in the preferences)
and should use _my current_ location's timezone in the display.

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cantbecool
I wonder if Youtube will be competitive and match what other live streaming
sites pay their broadcasters for video advertisements? From anecdotal
evidence, I know on Justin.tv select broadcasters that stream their Starcraft
2 matches make .002 cents per viewer for each 30 second commercial break,
which is not too shabby for simply playing a video game. Most broadcasters
that are partners on Justin.tv typically have 2000+ people watching their
stream simultaneously.

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flexd
This is a nice feature, but i don't see how it solves their obvious issues
serving out traffic? The past year i've had lots and lots of problems watching
media. It will fail in 360p but suddenly work great in 720p (bw-wise), i know
a lot of people experience this.

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chedigitz
It's been a long time overdue.

As both a YouTube and Ustream partner, I'm interested in how this could change
the advertising revenues for live events. Ustream uses google's adsense, so it
would be hard for ustream to match YouTube's ad split.

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jerrya
I want to see this make it down to the phone, ala Qik (which is currently
broekn on the Nexus One (or was as of a month ago)).

Then I'd really like to see an explosion of #copwatch #tsawatch live videos.
#civilliberties

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cft
Doesn't this tie them to Flash? As far as I know, one can live stream video
only using Flash, there are no provisions in HTML5. Is that correct?

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wmf
There are three or four competing HTTP-based non-Flash live streaming
protocols duking it out in the IETF. AFAIK Chrome hasn't implemented any of
them yet.

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cft
Do these protocols also capture video input from the camera?

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JeremyBanks
I would be surprised if in-browser tools are the main way that content will be
streamed. Other sites usually use external software.

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davidcann
Anybody found a broadcasting API for this yet?

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slavamnemonic
One more time killer in the internet.

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beefman
I hereby declare this the first day of the web 3.0 era.

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beefman
No really, I do.

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beefman
Seriously though.

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beefman
39 Don't Reinvent the Wheel

10 The 6 Reasons Every Startup Community is the Same

227 Why T-shirts matter at tech companies

and today was a pretty good day

