Larry Kless' Weblog: Livestream

Showing posts with label Livestream. Show all posts

Monday, May 30, 2011

Brands Are Using Live Streaming Video to Engage Fans on Facebook - Max Haot, Livestream

Over the last several years live video streaming has become a powerful marketing tool for artists and brands. For Max Haot, CEO and Co-founder of Livestream, it's been interesting to watch the growing trend of brands adopt live streaming to market their products. I caught up Haot at NewTeeVee Live 2010 where Livestream announced its new Livestream For Facebook application that allows anyone with Facebook pages to launch a live broadcast within Facebook. Livestream launched this service based on the demand they were seeing from the market and developed an easy way to integrate live streaming into Facebook. Livestream and its competitors had previously provided this service for a fee, but Livestream decided to launch it in a DIY way so that anyone could launch a Livestream channel and embed it in their Facebook page.

Facebook launched its own channel, Facebook Live, in August 2010 powered by Livestream, and has hosted numerous live video and chat with Hollywood celebrities, musicians other high profile Livestream events. Most notable is a recent Town Hall meeting with President Barack Obama that was streamed live from the Facebook headquarters.

comScore noted in a September 2010 study, that the amount of time American audiences spent watching video for the major live video publishers (USTREAM, Livestream, Justin.tv, LiveVideo, and Stickam) had grown 648% since 2009 to more than 1.4 billion minutes. While that's just a fraction of the amount of time Americans spent overall watching online video content, comScore said that the sharp growth indicates viewers’ growing comfort with watching live content. Additionally, the comScore report indicated that live video sites have not only been successful in building audience, but also keeping them more engaged, with the average live streamed video view is 7% longer than the average on demand video view.

"What's interesting for brands to realize," Haot notes, "is the engagement time is on average twenty to thirty minutes, versus if you post a trailer, it's only two or three minutes… and then they have a chance of really creating a viral buzz on Twitter and Facebook, and get a lot of eyeballs coming to the live stream because it's trended on Twitter."

Content brands like movie studios, use Livestream to market the release of a new movie within social networks like Facebook and Twitter through a live broadcast of the red carpet premiere. TV networks like HBO are taking advantage of the Livestream's ability to host live video Q&A sessions with celebrities and show exclusive behind the scene previews. Other brands like Ford used Livestream to launch its 2011 Ford Explorer and hosts regular live events on its Facebook pages with Q&A sessions with customers and fans. Restaurant chain PF Chang hosts a live cooking show to market its Pei Wei Asian Diner brand and takes questions from the audience.

Haot says that working with brands and content owners drives content quality and revenue and is core to Livestream's mission to build a next-generation live cable operator. But the bigger goal of Livestream is to unlock every event around the world, from major events like red carpet interviews at the Oscars or the Royal Wedding, to prosumer events from a church, a small baseball game, or even a smaller conference.

"If you look at the world of events today," Haot says, "a very small percent of these events are being live streamed, so we offer the technology, the tools and promotion to hopefully increase the amount events owners that realize that they can use Livestream to extend their event online and connect with audiences on Facebook and Twitter."

Another goal Haot says, is to increase the production quality and reach across the various platforms by offering HD quality and enhancing the mobile offering by live streaming to the popular mobile devices, and on the web by enhancing it with multi-bit rate encoding and HD. Haot says that connected TVs are another growing platform that event owners can reach and that 80% of all TVs sold today are "connected" TVs.

In a related post on Beet.TV today, Andy Plesser spoke with Kevin Delaney, Managing Editor of the WSJ.com, about the value of live video streaming at the Wall Street Journal. The news organization is creating value in process and audience by connecting with viewers through daily webcasts. This is yet more evidence that live streaming has become a mainstream tool for publishers to extend their reach beyond traditional outlets. As more content creators, publishers and broadcasters develop their mobile and OTT offerings, and with YouTube finally getting into the live streaming business with selected YouTube partners, it's clear that live video streaming has become an integral tool for artists and brands to connect with fans and that demand will continue to grow.

About Livestream
Livestream offers brands a complete solution for your live streaming project on Facebook - Including : Custom Facebook application development with integrated live streaming that gives you everything you need to launch your own 24/7 television station (including Like to watch), Live video platform (including CDN bandwidth from Akamai, social enabled chat and player) and on-side production/encoding services if needed. Livestream streams more than one billion video minutes each month to a growing community of 20 million monthly viewers (with some 50,000 watching at any given time) to audiences on the web, mobile devices, and connected TVs. Notable content partners include Facebook, The New York Times, ABC News, CBS News, Associated Press, HBO, AT&T, IBM, Burger King, Nike, The Academy Awards, The Foo Fighters, Maroon 5, Ralph Lauren, and Diesel.

Livestream was cofounded in 2007 by Max Haot, Dayananda Nanjundappa, Phil Worthington, and Mark Kornfilt, and has received $13 million in funding from private angel investors & Gannett Co. It now operates with over 50 full-time staff members in 3 offices - in New York, Los Angeles and Bangalore (in addition to a globally-available production team). The service is available for free (advertising-supported) or as a feature-rich, monetizable, premium subscription for business. In May 2009, Mogulus re-branded as Livestream. Become a fan of Livestream on Facebook and follow Livestream (livestream) on Twitter.

About Max Haot

Max Haot is CEO and co-founder of video streaming company Livestream. Max is an expert in user generated content, broadcast technologies and workflow. He previously founded ICF a media asset management platform which was sold to Verizon Business in 2005. He held positions as VP of Digital Media at Verizon Business and Senior Vice President at IMG Media - the television and interactive arm of the sport marketing giant (www.imgworld.com). Max is a recognized digital content industry pioneer and is regularly invited to speak and contribute at industry events/forums for the broadcast, broadband and mobile industry. Max is a Belgian national and lived in London, UK between 1995 and 2005 before moving to New York. Follow Max Haot (maxhaot) on Twitter.

Related:

Friday, February 5, 2010

Online Video Platform Summit: Building Value with Real Interactivity

In this final video from the Online Video Platform Summit, this panel discusses how interactive video experiences build value and engagement with online viewers. Interactivity by definition, is where a user can control their viewing experience, comment on it and actively contribute to it. The web evolved from text and image to interactive social media experiences. Social media interactivity can transform the passive, lean-back viewing experience into more of an active lean-in, engaged experience. A few examples are by customizing video players with clickable objects, comments, real-time chat, live audio and video, exploratory interactive video and virtual worlds, online gaming, and video remixes.

Building Value With Real Interactivity

Moderator: Tim Siglin, Chairman, Braintrust Digital
Alex Blum, CEO, KickApps
Scott Broomfield, Co-Founder and CEO, Veeple
Michael Dale, Open Media Developer, Wikimedia Foundation
Rainer Cvillink, Evangelist, Livestream

Video is more than just a one-way communication medium. At its best, it actively engages viewers in a lean-forward experience by allowing them to interact with the content in a unique way, including the ability to comment, rate, and share it across social networks; explore clickable objects within the video player; and even remix their own video responses using webcams or mobile devices. Live video streaming can offer even more functionality and an even higher level of interaction through real-time chat, live comment streams, and status updates. Our speakers will show examples of what you can do to make your video more of a targeted and personalized experience and discuss why you should make the effort.

Highlights from the Panel

The panel discussed ways to moving from audience to community. Community building tools from Kickapps, offer Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) suite of hosted social and media applications, to build highly interactive websites with a broad range of social experiences. CEO Alex Blum said that you can learn a lot about your audience or customers through their natural interaction, publishers can harvest data from their social media graph to gain insight for editorial choices, marketing or e-commerce, and foster deeper relationships with customers.

Veeple introduces clickable objects within the video that creates "call to actions" for viewers, interactive layer on top and deep analytics underneath. Engagement dramatically increases conversion and click-through rates for online advertising and marketing campaigns. According to CEO Scott Broomfield, Veeple customers have seen more than 25% viewer engagement by adding several interactive elements within the video. Veeple argues that the experience needs to branded, actionable and and measurable.

For Wikimedia, interactivity is used as a way to inspire collaborative production, through editing tools and sharing options. Values for Wikimedia community are free open source software, which Michael Dale said created problems for the video space, since there's no open ended video format. They are working with Kaltura to bring video to Wikipedia, and are pushing HTML 5 + Ogg Theora as the open video platform, and maintain that it's comparable in video quality to H.264.

Livestream offers a interactive TV platform by simulating traditional TV channels, but unlike
traditional TV where 98% is on demand, with a live channel, everyone is watching the same thing at the same time. Real-time comments on the live feed through chat, Facebook and Twitter allow viewers to engage with live broadcasters. The content creation tools Flex and Flash based studio giving control over the on air elements streaming solution with real-time conversation through user chat, Twitter and Facebook.

Many platforms offer a variety of solutions within the interactive space, which shape the way we consume, share, create, and monetize video content. This panel session offered unique examples of how interactivity builds value, by transforming viewers into contributors, and converting viewers into customers.

Alex Blum noted, that while many online video platforms are still having the same conversations about video from 10 years ago, he sees that changing:

"What I think is the next wave, is interactive elements within the video. The idea of wrapping social experience around the video experience."

Related @ovpsummit Tweets

@dboyll thanks for the kind words, and the tweets! 9:16 PM Nov 19th, 2009 from TweetDeck in reply to dboyll

RT @areggiori: RT @spidcast: New podcast: Managing video production work flow and metadata http://bit.ly/2MQyfm 4:13 PM Nov 19th, 2009 from TweetDeck

ogg theora video looks as good as h.264 -- at least in the wikimedia demo here #ovps09 3:49 PM Nov 19th, 2009 from TweetDeck

Wrapping up with session on building real interactivity into the video experience. Thanks to all who made the first OVPS so great.#ovps09 3:40 PM Nov 19th, 2009 from TweetDeck

RT @kyte: RT eMarketer: Stat of the day: 139.8 million people watch TV and go online simultaneously in the US. #stats 1:21 PM Nov 19th, 2009 from TweetDeck

RT @vamsri: Live video stream viweing on mobile devices barriers: mobile bandwidth, mobile device processing power #smwest09 12:27 PM Nov 19th, 2009 from TweetDeck

RT @klessblog Online Video Platform Summit Interactive Video Panel - Building Value With Real Interactivity http://bit.ly/115MAs #ovps09 12:18 PM Nov 19th, 2009 from web

RT @Kaltura: Michael Dale from Wikimedia Foundation, will discuss Kaltura's collaborative video project w/Wikipedia today at 3:30pm #ovps09 12:02 PM Nov 19th, 2009 from TweetDeck

Follow on Twitter

For detailed bios on each panelist, see - Online Video Platform Summit Interactive Video Panel - Building Value With Real Interactivity

Friday, November 20, 2009

Online Video Platform Summit Keynote - Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire, November 18, 2009

Brightcove CEO and Chairman Jeremy Allaire delivered the keynote address,""Setting the Stage for 2010 and the Future of Online Video", at the Online Video Platform Summit this past Wednesday, November 18th at 1:45 p.m. PST. His keynote was streamed live on Streamingmedia.com, and on this and many other blogs and websites powered by Livestream through an embeddable player. You'll see me in the beginning of the video introduce Jeremy, who presented a high level overview of some the underlying currents and drivers in the online video market and the shape of the online video platform industry and it's role in the broader development of web. He talked about the pervasiveness of video on the web, which he discussed in detail in my CEO Conversation post from earlier this week, and how virtually every professional organization - from SMBs (small medium-sized businesses) to major corporations or media publishers - are investing in their web sites and are starting to realize that video is one of the most effective mediums for their marketing and communication and education objectives. He also discussed the announcement earlier this week of the release Brightcove 4, an extensible suite of tools with a host of new features and many other new capabilities and Brightcove Express, an entry-level version of the service.

Twitter played a large role in the Online Video Platform Summit and Streaming Media West providing great conversation context to the sessions. There were a number notable Tweets during the keynote including:

@dboyll: Jeremy, re OVP's "it's only a platform if developers are building on top of it"

@ayolo: Jeremy Allaire: Expansion of how online video is being used is "driving the complexity." Want to do more with video - brand, site #ovps09 and

@jbreitfelder: Brightcove #ovps09 keynote - two best ways to spread video: search & social

Stay tuned for more #smwest09 and #ovps09 coverage!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Online Video Platform Summit Interactive Video Panel - Building Value With Real Interactivity

Tim Siglin
Chairman
Braintrust Digital

Tim Siglin is a contributing editor for StreamingMedia.com. He serves as Chairman of Braintrust Digital, a digital media production company, and is a co-founder of the go-to-market consulting firm, Transitions, Inc. He has been involved full-time with strategic consulting and digital media integrations fields for almost 20 years. Besides writing as a contributing editor for StreamingMedia.com, Siglin has also recently created a new blog, covering digital media workflows, with emphasis on metadata and online video in the corporate, higher education, web development production industries. The blog can be accessed at www.workflowed.com

Braintrust Digital is a media production and design company specializing in creation and delivery of content through traditional and new media. Braintrust also provides AV integration services for select clients that require high-quality viewing experiences on corporate, religious and educational campuses.

Transitions, Inc. - a business and technology development firm - assists startups and hypergrowth businesses in the financial services, digital media and advertising / marketing industries.

Speakers
Alex Blum
CEO
KickApps

As the CEO of KickApps, Alex is responsible for building a world class technology, marketing, business development, finance, and operations team with the goal of providing web publishers the tools to easily enable their sites with User Generated Content, Social Networking, Premium Video, and Content Syndication capabilities.

Before joining KickApps, Alex was President and COO of JumpTV, a leading Multi-Cultural Internet Protocol Television Network. Prior to JumpTV Alex spent 8 years at AOL most recently as the Vice President of Product Marketing for AOL's Audience business where Alex and his team were responsible for re-launching the AOL Portal and delivering an entire suite of web-based applications including: AOL's Video Player, Video Portal, Streaming Video advertising platform, AIM and AIMpages social networking service. Prior to that, Alex was General Manager of AOLTV, where he established strategic relationships with DirecTV, TiVo, OpenTV and Philips Electronics. Prior to joining AOL, Alex spent ten years in the software industry participating in three successful startup opportunities. Alex has an MBA from the Albers School of Business at Seattle University and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado.

Scott Broomfield
Co-Founder and CEO
Veeple

As CEO and Co-Founder of Veeple, Scott brings more than twenty years experience in leading highly-talented and innovative entrepreneurs in developing cloud-based software products. Scott's first experience with interactive media was over 15 years ago when he was a strategic advisor to Frox, the first true interactive television platform. Before Veeple, Scott was a managing director at Sand Hill Management Partners, a small Venture firm in Palo Alto, CA. During 2004 and 2005, Scott ran CALLIXA, an Enterprise Information Integration (EII) software company that he sold to SAP software in 2005. From 2001 through 2004, Scott led Visuale, a private Business Process Management Software (BPMS) company that he sold to Onyx Software. From 1998 through 2001, he led Centura Software Corporation (formerly Gupta), a $50M public software company, where he was recruited to turn around the business. Scott successfully repositioned Centura in the wireless enterprise computing market and accomplished a ten-fold capital return to its major investors, before selling the business in 2001. From 1989 through 1997, he was a principal with Hickey & Hill, Inc. a business re-engineering and turnaround management firm. In this capacity, Scott held senior operational, financial and advisory positions with Dazix, DEC, Etec, Frox, InVision, Trilogy and Samsung. Scott holds a MBA from Santa Clara University.

Michael Dale
Open Media Developer
Wikimedia Foundation

Michael Dale is an advocate for open video on the web based on free codecs like ogg theora. The past year he has lead development of open source collaborative video for Wikipedia in partnership with Kaltura and in collaboration with Mozilla's html5 video efforts. In 2006 Michael Dale co-founded metavid.org a community video archive of US proceedings.

Rainer Cvillink
Evangelist
Livestream

Rainer is a 20-year Electronic Media veteran with work experience in both US and Europe. As Evangelist for Livestream he creates content, gets the word out and leads people. Rainer replaces Max Haot, Co-founder and CEO, Livestream on this panel.

Follow OVP Summit (ovpsummit) on Twitter
hashtag #ovps09

Monday, November 2, 2009

The Foo Fighters, Pure Internet Rock and The Future of Music

The Foo Fighters know how to rock. They've toured live for the last 15 years reaching a fan base that stretches across the globe. But last Friday, October 30th at 7pm (PT), they opened up the virtual doors to their Studio 606 in Los Angeles to put on their first live concert produced exclusively for their fans online.

The free live show was powered by Livestream and aired on the band's Livestream and Facebook pages to promote the release of their much anticipated Greatest Hits album on November 3rd.

The performance featured Facebook/Twitter chat integrations so that fans could interact with the band and each other live during the performance. The Foo Fighters' Facebook page incorporated a similar live stream+chat module that's been used in a variety of events over the last year, including CNN's live stream of Barack Obama's inauguration.

According to Livestream Co-founder and CEO Max Haot:

"As the Foo Fighters were playing, they were keeping an eye on the stream of Facebook status updates coming in, sometimes responding to comments and taking song requests. This is first time ever that a live concert was produced just for their fans online – it was not just a broadcast of an existing concert/event. The concert attracted more than 150,000 viewers and trended on Twitter (#2, #1 was Halloween), was #1 on Digg and was featured on Facebook Celebs. The event generated a lot of buzz in the music and social media industry."

Watch live streaming video from foofighters at livestream.com

The integration of live video and interactive chat helps build value on many levels by enabling artists to connect with fans, extend their reach through existing social networks and boost their video marketing, merchandising and promotion efforts. The cost to produce a live event using an online video platform like Livestream is significantly less than traditional broadcast television. Advertising and sponsorship deals will also help generate revenue for artists and music industry along with interactive elements and click-to-buy opportunities. The appeal for bands is obvious as Jason Kincaid noted on Techcrunch:

"Live concert streams seem to be a growing trend for the web’s most popular content and social sites. Last week MySpace streamed their Secret Show Weezer concert in San Francisco. And earlier this week YouTube streamed a U2 concert from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA. The event was a huge success, drawing a reported 10 million streams. YouTube also streamed San Francisco’s Outside Lands music festival in August. Hulu has also gotten in on the action, with a Dave Matthews Band stream May."

Liz Gaines at NewTeeVee thinks bands are not taking full advantage of real monetization opportunities through advertising sponsorship, and made this point:

"But I have to ask, where is the business model for these shows? The music industry, after all, is well known for its trouble grappling with the shift to digital. It wants to keep charging us for formats we don’t want to buy anymore. Here we are, introducing a whole new category of music product, and there’s been little more than a Google text ad monetizing any one of these examples. Granted, inserting ads into live recordings may be a little bit more complicated than for your standard web video, but when we’re talking 10 million views, it’s time to get a major sponsor, or at least link in real-time to where to buy an MP3 of the song that’s playing. Live concert audiences are an amazing monetization opportunity. Lots of people engaged for long periods of time simultaneously? You couldn’t ask for more."

For the Foo Fighters, this live interactive video event was performed exclusively for fans and was both a first and hopefully not the last, as the band plans to take a hiatus to pursue solo projects. Randi Zuckerberg, who is both the sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's Marketing Director had this to say:

"I'm cheesy, but this Foo Fighters live on Facebook concert honestly makes me feel like I'm watching the future of music."

The Foo Fighters are:

Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel and Chris Shiflett

Also, in two weeks Max Haot will be a featured panelist at the Online Video Platform Summit speaking on Building Value with Real Interactivity.

Update 11/3/09 via @newteevee:

Foo Fighters Draw 440,000 Live Streams to Web-Only Show

"The Foo Fighters’ live show on Friday night came with little fanfare outside of the band’s core fanbase, but it delivered 2 hours and 45 minutes of greatest hits to more than 150,000 viewers around the world. The video drew 440,000 total live streams, with a max of 20,000 at any one time... (more) "

Livestream Launches Live Mobile HD Streaming with Livepack, Say Goodbye to Expensive Satellite Uplink Trucks

Today, Livestream launched Livepack, a totally wireless turn-key hardware solution for live mobile HD streaming. Through a partnership with LiveU, makers of hand-held video uplink devices, Livestream offers a unique bundled solution that combines a hardware device with their live streaming platform. This solution addresses the needs of video producers and video professionals who need to broadcast live anytime, from anywhere and on-the-go with video up to HD quality at 700-1000 kbps.

Livepack is a portable device that fits into a backpack and includes six load-balanced 3G/EVDO modems for redundancy over three carriers (AT&T, Verizon and Sprint) with data plans are that covered within the price. It allows you to go anywhere with a complete roaming camera setup and aimed to replace the expense of a traditional satellite uplink truck and satellite time.

While live mobile streaming is not new with companies like Qik.com, Flixwagon and Bambuser having been on the market for a few years, according to Livestream CEO Max Haot, mobile phone streaming is not a viable option if you want to live stream an event.

I spoke with Max yesterday and he pointed out that,

"You're not going to stream a two hour event using a mobile phone due to the battery life, the quality of the lens, the zoom, but more importantly also the fact that's it's only one 3G network which is usually unreliable. So the other option that has been available to people needing to do wireless live streaming has been traditional broadcast satellite. This type of equipment is hugely expensive (up to $50,000 a day) and most live streaming events can't afford it. It's usually reserved for television."

Max added that if you're an event organizer and you want to live stream today you either have to make sure you have a wifi connection, laptop, camera or any sort of feed to encode reliably on the Internet using a platform such as theirs. But if you want to do it wirelessly where you don't have a connection available which is the case in most venues, or if you want to be on the move and create a roaming camera feed, there's been no solution out there at the quality you need to live stream something serious like an event. But now with their solution, Livepack is like having a satellite television truck in a backpack.

The technology was originally built by their partner LiveU really aimed to replace the satellite broadcast truck and the prime market was really broadcasters. LiveU has been building this technology for the last few years and have been selling it to NBC and others. So instead of bringing back an event feed from a truck they are bringing back the feed using a LiveU device. Max said that at Livestream they've paid attention to it and started to integrate it more and more over the last six to eight months. They actually announced the first relationship with LiveU at NAB in March and as both they and their joint customers used it more Livestream realized they needed to integrate it deeply into their service.

They way the service works is that Livestream bundles the hardware and service plan in either a monthly or annual rental fee. The Livepack device is easy to use and accepts a direct DV camera feed into the FireWire port. There's a touchscreen to control the box and three hours of battery life included or you can either have external batteries. Once you turn it on all you do is press the start button and it goes directly live into your Livestream channel.

Max explained that their unique offering is possible through three real breakthroughs,

"The first is the fact that it's fully integrated from one vendor including the CDN, the player and all the features of our (the Livestream) platform and the hardware. The second part is that instead of using a laptop at an event you now have a ruggedized piece of equipment with a touchscreen. There's really no moving parts, you can put it in a backpack which is pretty innovative instead of playing with laptops at an event. The third piece is the most important is the technology that we fully integrated with Live U which are six load-balanced 3G/EVDO modems over three carriers which are included, activated and the data plans are covered within the price."

Max noted that with a combination of these modems and the technology it takes the video feed internally from the encoder and splits it over all the available bandwidth on the six modems, sends it directly to their cloud where they recompose the feed and integrate into the Livestream's platform. It's a great application for red carpets, backstage at concerts, sporting events, town hall meetings, ceremonies, transmitting from a moving car, and a variety of enterprise applications. Livepack was recently used for coverage of the MTV Video Music Awards, NY Fashion Week, Harry Potter movie premiere and Pixie Lott Live.

So say goodbye to those expensive satellite uplink costs because wireless live streaming at HD quality just got better.

For more info visit www.livestream.com/livepack

Availability and Pricing

Livestream Livepack is available in the U.S. for monthly or yearly rental directly from Livestream, and includes the hardware unit, custom designed backpack, dedicated IP address for the Livestream channel, all 3G/EVDO network charges, and 30 hours of streaming uplink time per month. Neither a DV camera nor tripod are included. Month-to-month rental without commitment is $2,500 per month plus the cost of shipping. Yearly rental is $1,500 per month plus the cost of shipping. To order Livepack, email: getlivepack@livestream.com

About Livestream
Livestream (formerly Mogulus) provides everything needed to easily webcast live, build an engaged audience and monetize these efforts. Founded in 2007, the company is based in New York and includes Gannett Co. as a minority shareholder and investor. Producers can use Livestream to create live, linear and on-demand Internet television to broadcast anywhere on the Web through a single embeddable player widget. The service comes in two flavors: Free (ad-supported) and Premium (ad-free, white-label, higher-quality). Unique features include the ability to mix multiple live cameras, overlay graphics, and desktop streaming with 3D effects.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Coming Soon to Klessblog, CEO Conversations

It's been a busy summer which kept me running and offline frequently and probably the busiest I've been at my corporate day job in years. But I'm happy to report it's been quite an adventure. I've had the opportunity to meet many new people along the way, make new friends and interview CEOs, Co-founders, marketing directors, product managers and thought leaders who help shape the future of online video and social media. As I approach the two year mark of Larry Kless' Weblog, with close to 400 blog posts and counting, I want to acknowledge and thank everyone who took the time to reach out to me, contribute news and information, arrange conference calls, send me emails and press releases and most importantly help educate me on the value they bring to the online video space so that I can share those conversations with the readers of this blog.

I mentioned a few months ago,

"What I love about writing this blog is that I get to meet new people and learn all about their companies, the products and services they offer and their technology innovations that help shape the online video industry."

But with the daily demands of my professional and personal life it's been a challenge to publish many of the interviews I've conducted over the last few months in a timely manner. I find myself echoing the same words from that previous post to say, I have a number of blog posts I'm working on I wanted to take a moment to let you all know what's upcoming on this blog.

Coming in September: CEO Conversations

While this isn't a new feature, I'll be giving it some focus with a title much like Pete Wylie and Tim Street have done on their blogs when they interview online video leaders. Here's some of the people who I've had the pleasure of speaking with whom I will profile in the coming weeks.

Jeremy Allaire, CEO and Chairman, Brightcove
Hooman Radfar, CEO and Co-founder, Clearspring
Abe McCallum, CEO, Clikthrough
Ben Weinberger, CEO and Co-Founder, Digitalsmiths
Ron Yekutiel, CEO and Chairman, Kaltura
Max Haot, CEO and Co-founder, Livestream
Gregory Casale, CEO, Starbak
Peter Csathy, CEO and President, Sorenson Media

Not to mention
Additional interviews and conversations I've had with other online video leaders and companies, that have yet to be published:

Adap.tv - talks about the upgraded OneSource 2.0 ad management platform
Channels.com - CEO Sean Doherty discusses his RSS video site which launched last September '08
The Feedroom - Matt DeLoca, SVP of Sales discusses the rapid adoption they are seeing at the corporate level for online video advertising and communications and updates The Feedroom's web site and business focus
WonderHowTo - a conversation with CEO Stephen Chao about his how-to video site

There's a whole lot more that I'll be publishing on this blog. With the Online Video Platform Summit and Streaming Media West now just a few months away you can bet that I'll be promoting those events as well. I also want thank Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Dan Rayburn and Joel Unickow at Streamingmedia.com and my good friend Mark Robertson, Founder of ReelSEO who have been great supporters and have given me the opportunity to extend my reach beyond this blog.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Twitcam Goes Live on Twitter, Trumps the Competition

I had a chance to test Twitcam this past evening, the new live video streaming Twitter mash-up from Livestream (formerly Mogulus), and see firsthand what happens when live video meets Twitter. According to Livestream, Twitcam is the first application that lets Twitter users add live streaming video to their Twitter feeds with a webcam and a click of the button. Twitcam.com was taken from concept to product in a week thanks to a soon-to-be-announced player API (application programming interface) from Livestream and trumps CamTweet, the offering by live video streaming competitor Justin.tv that debuted just ten days earlier at TechCrunch's Real Time Stream CrunchUp and entered in a private beta today.

Erick Schonfeld noted that,"It is a really simple, but powerful idea. So simple, in fact, that one of Justin.TV’s competitors, Livestream CEO Max Haot (who was watching the demo from New York via UStream, another live Web video competitor) decided to create the exact same product using Livestream’s new, yet-to-be released APIs."

Joseph Tartakoff pointed out that Justin.tv learned a painful lesson about being discrete with a business idea until it goes live and confirmed through a Livestream spokeswoman that Max Haot did in fact see the live demo and quickly created his own app saying, "it shows how rapidly Livestream, and technology in general, is moving."

[twitcam_klessblog.jpg]

From a user standpoint it's really easy to use and I was able to start "video Tweetcasting" within just a few minutes after a few simple steps. Twitter users need only to log in to Twitcam.com with their existing Twitter account and a webcam and press the ‘Broadcast Live’ button. Twitcam automatically detects the camera, creates a page and live video player for the broadcast, and posts the link in the user’s Twitter feed so followers can join in live. A Livestream account is not needed and a unique Twitcam live broadcast page is created from your Twitter profile. Recent broadcasts are stored on your profile page.

Within minutes of starting my broadcast and sending my first Tweet I was joined by several friends who were able to watch my live video feed and chat with me. Thanks to @Schuras @SafetyGeeksSVI @Gennefer @spotcher and anyone else I may have missed for helping me with the test by joining the live broadcast.

From my page I could see all the Tweets centralized within a real-time chat interface. Each Tweet is created when you enter something in the live chat and the Tweets include the broadcast page URL along with a mention of your Twitter name. @Gennefer said, "It was fun! I've been wanting to check it out and assess potential use cases. Would've been perfect for #dewlabs interaction." She also thought that "Could be interesting for cooperative entertainment experiences, but I couldn't see the other viewers' posts."

There are a few issues that need work and with the open API there may be possible improvements. Not seeing each others posts is a real drawback and it would be ideal for the Tweets to be aggregated into an interface for all viewers to see. The video size of the archive recording at 320 x 240 is a little small for most applications. I also didn't embed the video in this post because the default for the video is autoplay which most people find extremely annoying. You can though see my broadcast test here.

Amit Desai listed a number or ways that both that Twitcam and CamTweet can strengthen relationships going beyond simple chat to deeper video communications for marketers, businesses, researchers, academia and families.

Adding live video to Twitter really turns the worldwide talk show into a real live talk show. It makes the makes the conversation a real conversation with a live video stream driving the Twitter stream.

Twitcam is free and available today at http://www.twitcam.com.

Follow twitcam (twitcam) on Twitter

Follow Livestream (livestreamcom) on Twitter

About Livestream
Livestream (www.livestream.com - formerly Mogulus) provides everything needed to easily webcast live, build an engaged audience and monetize these efforts. Founded in 2007, the company is based in New York and includes Gannett Co. as a minority shareholder and investor. Producers can use Livestream to create live, linear and on-demand Internet television to broadcast anywhere on the Web through a single embeddable player widget. The service comes in two flavors: Free (ad-supported) and Premium (ad-free, white-label, higher-quality). Unique features include the ability to mix multiple live cameras, overlay graphics, and desktop streaming with 3D effects.

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Monday, June 15, 2009

Streaming Media East: Live Broadcasting Over Mobile and Wi-Fi Networks

This video from Streaming Media East is moderated by pioneer video blogger Steve Garfield who opens the session talking about how he attended Late Night with Jimmy Fallon the evening before and got backstage for an exclusive interview with Jimmy, which he broadcast live on the internet with his Nokia 95 phone using Qik, the popular live mobile broadcasting platform. Steve has delivered this presentation at several Streaming Media conferences and it's always a treat since it's a mix of discussion and live demonstration. Over the years Steve has been experimenting with audio and video tools to increase the quality by using high fidelity microphones with cell phones and laptops. Steve teaches New Media Tools for Journalism at the Boston University, College of Communication Department of Journalism and recently authored, Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business. He's joined by Qik co-founder Bhaskar Roy and Max Haot CEO and Founder of Livestream, which had been formerly known as Mogulus until they recently rebranded, who also demonstrate their live streaming applications. Qik recently announced that Nokia's Ovi Store launches with Qik and Qik comes pre-loaded on the new Nokia N97. Livestream recently released a free desktop broadcasting application called Procaster, which is designed for use with its service which is easy-to-use and offers high quality video and production value with the ability to mix live camera and screen sharing in both 2D and 3D.

Live Broadcasting Over Mobile and Wi-Fi Networks

Track B (B101) 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

While big media tests the waters of mobile broadcasting, many web video producers are already out there doing it live from the street with cell phones. Others are joining in and experimenting with two-way broadcasts via streaming video over cell phone networks and via Wi-Fi. Viewers can chat while the broadcast is going on and affect—and sometimes even direct—the content being produced. Steve Garfield will talk with other pioneers in the live mobile broadcasting space about their experiences at the forefront of this new technology for sharing their stories over the web.

Moderator:	Steve Garfield, Mobile Video Journalist, SteveGarfield.com
Panel:	Bhaskar Roy, Co-Founder, Qik.com Max Haot, Founder, CEO, Mogulus (now Livestream)

For more on live mobile broadcasting applications check out Robin Good's Mobile Live Video Streaming: Best Tools To Broadcast Yourself From Your Mobile Phone.