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:

• Broadcast Live on Your Website - Livestream.com
• Livestream on Facebook
• Livestream Blog » Blog Archive » Announcing Livestream for Facebook
• Livestream For Facebook Lets You DIY Live Stream Video On Fan Pages
• New Facebook Application Streams Live Video From Pages
• Beet.TV: Livestream Claims Average Video Viewing Time of Sixteen Minutes
• Live Streaming Video Jumps 600% in Past Year (comScore Voices)
• 1.4B Minutes of Live Online Video Watched in July Online Video News
• 5 Questions With…Livestream.com’s Max Haot Online Video News
• Beet.TV: The Value Live Video Streaming at The Wall Street Journal is both the Audience and Process

Mogulus Pro Launches Today: New Features Include HD Quality, White Label, Privacy, Analytics & More Available

From the announcement:
Mogulus Blog » Blog Archive » Mogulus Pro Launches: HD Quality, White Label, Privacy, Analytics & More Available Today

What is Mogulus PRO?

"Mogulus Pro gives you the same great, industry-leading features and functionality that you now enjoy with your Mogulus FREE account - and more! We've added a bundle of new features geared toward professional producers, so you can have even more quality, control and flexibility."

• Learn more about Mogulus Pro
• Preview quality and features at the Pro Channel Showcase

Hear Mogulus CEO Max Haot describe the features of Mogulus Pro:

Beet.TV Convenes Online Video Summit This Week at 30 Rock in New York City

This past week on Tuesday October 28th, Beet.TV held an Online Video Summit roundtable discussion that was streamed live using Mogulus and hosted by Andy Plesser with co-moderators Dan Farber, Editor-in-Chief of CNET News.com and Erick Schonfeld, co-editor of TechCrunch. They were joined by an impressive panel of online video and technology leaders at the msnbc.com Digital Cafe at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. For a list of participants, please see their earlier post and check out Beet.TV to see their exclusive interviews from the event.

The Beet.TV Online Video Roundtable: Live Streaming, Blogging from 30 Rock, Right Here
Here's part 1 and 2 of the recorded session.

See Kelsey Blodget's live blogging from the event here.

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

Steve Garfield led this fun session at Streaming Media West on live streaming from mobile phones and wi-fi networks. I caught up with Steve, Bhaskar Roy of Qik and Rainer Cvillink of Mogulus as they were getting ready and captured a few minutes of each of them on my Flip Video camera. While I recorded this video that I later edited and posted online -- which Steve called "old technology" -- they were streaming live!


Here's the official video produced by ScribeMedia.org:


Live Broadcasting Over Mobile and Wi-Fi Networks

Track B: (B101) September, 23, 2008 10:30 AM - 11:15 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, wherever they are. Viewers can chat while the broadcast is going on and affect and sometimes even direct the content being produced. Come to this session to hear Steve Garfield talk with other pioneers in the live broadcasting space about their experiences at the forefront of this new technology for sharing their stories over the web.

Presenters:

Steve Garfield, Mobile Video Journalist, SteveGarfield.com Bhaskar Roy, Co-Foudner, Qik.com Rainer Cvillink, Evangelist, Mogulus

Here are a few videos from both Bhaskar and Steve from different camera angles. Their videos were streamed live from their Nokia N95 mobile phones using Qik and then later uploaded to their Qik pages. You can see me in Bahskar's first video as I him if he signed up for the Streaming Media West Qik Event.







You can see more of their videos at the Qik Events Page at - http://qik.com/event/359/streaming-media-west/day/3
Download handout here - Live Broadcasting Over Mobile and Wi-Fi Networks

Pop17: Behind the Scenes of Live Broadcast

Jim Kukral brought this video to my attention (via Twitter) by Pop17 producer and lifecaster Sarah Austin (formerly Meyers) that takes a peak behind the scenes of her live broadcast on Mogulus.

She says, "I have been getting a lot of emails recently asking me how I make my live show. I’m lucky to have the help of Mogulus and their studio. I also use an N95 phone which I broadcast on to Flixwagon when outside of the studio. Some of the equipment I use for the live show is not necessary, but adds an extra layer to the production quality compared to streaming right off your laptop (which I also do sometimes as well)"






As Sarah says, she uses professional audio gear, like Sennheiser lav mics, an audio mixer, a mini DV camera, fluorescent news lights, green screens with the Ultimatte DV for chroma keying, just to name a few.

Here's a nice write up on the Ultimatte DV with photos and description. You can also check out B&H Photo for great prices on audio and video gear (and no sales tax!) or Markertek for deals.

Streaming Media East 2008: Live Broadcasting Over Mobile and Wi-Fi Networks

Here's one more Streaming Media East video from the collection videos available from the conference courtesy of Scribe Media. This panel session also focused on live broadcasting over the internet with demonstrations using both Mogulus and Qik. Several videos were recorded live during the session by Max Haot available here, Bhaskar Roy's are here and Steve Garfield's are here courtesy of SteveGarfield.com.

Another video by José Castillo is available here courtesy of ThinkJose who says, "Steve from stevegarfield.com moderated a great panel at Streaming Media East 08 on mobile video. Using both mogulus.com and qik.com to show off his Nokia N95 skills he surprised us all when he left the room mid-panel and went on a tour of the show. This was a highlight of the show for me!"Publish Post

Live Broadcasting Over Mobile and Wi-Fi Networks Track C: (C104) 2:45 PM - 3:30 PM While big media tests the waters of mobile broadcasting, many web video producers are already out there doing it live from the street with a cell phone. Others are joining in and experimenting with two-way broadcasts via streaming video over cell phone networks and via Wi-Fi, wherever they are. Viewers can chat while the broadcast is going on and affect and sometimes even direct the content being produced. Come to this session to hear Steve Garfield talk with other pioneers in the live broadcasting space about their experiences on the forefront of this new technology for sharing their stories over the web. Moderator: Steve Garfield, Mobile Video Journalist, SteveGarfield.com Presenters: Max Haot, Founder, CEO, Mogulus Bhaskar Roy, Co-Foudner, Qik.com

Mogulus Launches Google Overlay Ads Today

Starting today at 3pm EST, Mogulus will begin inserting overlay adverts in all Mogulus Free channels. A May 28th email to Mogulus channel producers along with a post the Mogulus blog said, "The adverts are provided by our partner Google and are content and viewer location targeted text adverts. They will be shown on the Mogulus channel page and all embedded Mogulus players (for Mogulus Free channels only)"

This Beet.TV video by Andy Plesser was recorded last week at Streaming Media East, and is an interview with Max Haot, CEO and Founder of Mogulus who discusses the launch of Google overlay ads.




The email/blog post continued, "We hope you will agree that the ads are not too intrusive and, particularly in this first phase, we sincerely hope that you will leave them enabled. Advertising on Mogulus Free channels will help us to offset some of the high hosting bandwidth costs we are incurring every month and allow us to keep the free platform exactly that...free! We'll also be evaluating just how effective the ads are and this will help us plan a future release of advertising revenue share programs for selected Mogulus producers."

To see the adverts in action visit "The Digital Lifestyle".

http://www.mogulus.com/tdl
http://www.thedigitallifestyle.tv

Streaming Media East News Coverage from Day One

Streaming Media East kicked off day one the conference in New York City Hilton yesterday with day two about to begin in just a few short hours. I found a small sampling of news coverage which I've listed below and I'm sure more will appear in the coming days and weeks.

• Streaming Media East 2008: Day 1: AT&T is Back in the Video Streaming and CDN Game - Streamingmedia.com

• Online Video Watch » SME: George Kliavikoff Keynote
• Online Video Watch » Streaming Media East Panel: How Old Media is Embracing Online Video and New Media
• Online Video Watch » Streaming Media East Panel: Monetizing and Aggregating Niche Video Content

• Hulu Targeting TV Sets, Mobile Devices (GE, NWS) - Silicon Alley Insider

• Floor Talk: Streaming Media East : IpTV EVANGELIST: Blog

Dan Rayburn noted on his blog yesterday that, "In addition to the many sites who are producing video on-demand content from the Streaming Media East show, we've also got a few folks broadcasting live from the show today and tomorrow.

• Beet.TV will be broadcasting live from the show floor on Tuesday from noon-2pm EST on their Mogulus channel.
• TVWorldwide will be broadcasting live from the show floor and from some of the conference sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday from 11am-3:30pm EST.
• ScribeMedia.org will be filming and recording every session on both days and we'll be making all of the content available on-demand after the event."

Steve Garfield shot a number of videos from the exhibit floor and from his panel presentation with Bhaskar Roy of Qik and Max Haot of Mogulus. You can see them on on his Qik page.

UPDATE: Here's one that I missed:

• The Real Truth on CDN Pricing - webvideouniverse.com

Beet.TV Broadcasting Live from Streaming Media East

Beet.TV is broadcasting live from Streaming Media East today from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM EDT. I'm watching the live stream right now via Beet.TV's Mogulus channel and Andy Plesser just interviewed Max Haot CEO of Mogulus, Charles Finkelstein from Microsoft Expression Encoder and is now interviewing Kevin Towes from Adobe who is discussing the release of Flash Player 10. They are set up for live chat or call in live questions.



On2 Technologies also has a live feed from their booth via Justin.tv.

UPDATE:
No sooner than I published this post Andy caught up with the Steve Garfield who discussed his style of live streaming he calls "Storycasting." Here's a Qik video from Steve which includes a tour of the show floor with a nice greeting from Dan Rayburn, Executive Vice President of Streamingmedia.com.

Livenewscameras.com Aggregates Live Webcast News Feeds

If you're like me, you may be a news junkie. I admit it, I'm addicted to my RSS feeds and when I don't have access to my 200+ feeds I track in my Google Reader I start to get the shakes and break out in a cold sweat. Well not really, but I do get the feeling that I'm missing and losing track of vital real-time information that keeps me informed. If you are a regular reader of this blog you know that my focus is tracking and discussing the technology, trends and news related to online video, streaming media and collaboration. I don't usually track "top story" and "breaking news" that you'd find on TV or CNN.

But for those of you that need your minute-by-minute news fix you should check out Livenewscameras.com. I heard about this pioneering news aggregator, that's currently in beta, other day while reading the Mogulus blog. Max Haot pointed out they are using the Mogulus platform for their live moderator feed and shared a video from G4TV by way of Steve Baron at Livenewscameras.com that is featured below.



Incidentally, I was reading the newspaper today and saw an article, New Web Site Feeds News Habit, by Susan Young of the Oakland Tribune, who said that one of our local new stations, KRON was the first news station in the Bay Area tha twould be joining Livenewscameras.com.

Young writes, "Newspapers and television news are territorial. They don't like sharing. But what they like less is having a news aggregator such as Google come in and make big bucks on their work. So former KTVU-Channel 2 news director Andrew Finlayson, who now works for the Fox station in Chicago, has come up with a plan to share some of those raw video feeds that local TV news gathers and trims for their broadcasts, and turn those feeds into Web fodder... (called) www.livenewscameras.com, which currently has more than 100 live feeds. Click on any of the news logos that line up in a box pattern across the screen. Check out Tampa, where there's a fire going on. The Birmingham station has cameras pointed on a civil rights conference, or go over to another station for a live town hall meeting with Sen. Barack Obama."

Young continued that, "Visitors engage in live chats with each other, which is probably more annoying than helpful. It pops up in the middle of the screen, although you can minimize it. In the upper right-hand corner, there's a live camera often showing a person in the Chicago newsroom who keeps tabs on what's happening, and passes that info along to people logged in to the site. Or sign up for a free Twitter account (www.twitter.com) and get the alerts through your cell phone or computer." (more...)

I spent some time on the web site today and I think they are on to something here with the centralized aggregation of new feeds with a moderated chat room. As Young points out, "(Andrew) Finlayson sees the site expanding to a time when citizen journalists and others can capture breaking news on their wireless equipment and pass it on to the Web. Much like what happened last month when the Olympic torch passed through San Francisco... Finlayson says it's been an interesting experience experimenting with a news future that will be "live from the scene on any screen" and can transfer from the Web site to streaming video live from cell phones."

"Stations from different networks agreed to be part of it, even our competitors, because if we don't, someone else will," Finlayson says. "And it will probably be Google."

• Quotes courtesy of Oakland Tribune by Susan Young. You can contact her at 925-945-4705 or syoung@bayareanewsgroup.com. Read her blog at www.ibabuzz.com/getelife.

Beet.TV Live from NAB 2008

Andy Plesser is in Las Vegas this week broadcasting live from the floor of the 2008 NAB show. His Mogulus channel is embedded below and the live feeds are scheduled at 4:00 PM PDT. Try out the new on-demand feature to see interviews with Bill Joel, CEO of On2 Technologies, Cory Bergman of Lost Remote and Max Haot, CEO of Mogulus, Thomas R Wilde, CEO of multimedia SEO solution EveryZing, Art Mimnaugh of Digital Fountain, John Griffin of UK-based ioko, with more to come. Thanks again to Beet.tv for providing the videos!



Notably absent from NAB this year were competitors Avid and Apple who both pulled out of the show leaving Adobe to slug it out with Microsoft. I recall when I went to NAB in 2006 that Avid, Apple and Adobe all had very large competing booths right across from each other. At that time I saw several emerging trends which now two years later are becoming the norm.

• H.264 as standard video delivery format
• Mobile content
  
• Alternate distribution channels
• Tapeless acquisition
• Move from SD to HD

These are a few links I've been checking to get updates from the show:

• NAB Show blog
• Digital Content Producer - BlogLive@NABShow
• Broadcast Engineering Blog
• Broadcasting & Cable Articles
• Videoguys' Blog
• StreamingMedia.com: Industry News Feed

It's All About Integration (Seesmic + Twhirl) and (Qik, Flixwagon + YouTube)

Convergence, acquisitions and integration are the synergy that feeds our social networks, entertainment outlets and information feeds. It was big news for Seesmic yesterday as Loic Le Meur announced the acquisition Twhirl, a popular Adode Air Twitter client by German developer Marco Kaiser that lets users connect with text messaging social services like Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku outside of a browser interface.

Loic Le Meur says, "Staying in touch with your friends using microblogging is much easier using a client than through your browser" and offers 20 reasons why this integration will benefit the Seesmic community on his blog and in the video below.




There has been plenty of coverage on the acquisition TechMeme and on Le Meur's blog. and ReadwriteWeb's Marshall Kirkpatrick sums up the benefits an in depth review, Seesmic + Twhirl is a Vision of the Web's Future, saying that, "Video + Microblogging = Rich User Experience" and that, "How long until even more services are rolled into this new dynamo? Seesmic already integrates outbound publishing with YouTube, Qik and Twitter. How long until the company rolls out lifestreaming capabilities ala FriendFeed, displaying recent user and aggregate-friend activity on any number of other services - then storming the Facebook Newsfeed as a packaged solution to the 3rd party RSS feed dilemma there? Probably not very long... Lifestreaming apps are making this a service, FriendFeed is the leader today, but somehow this functionality is a logical thing to come to Seesmic/Twhirl next."

Doug Caverly from WebProNews says, "There are obviously some potential sticking points - Seesmic is still in alpha, and Twitter itself is notorious for suffering untimely outages. Yet on the whole, the deal looks like it could give quite a boost to microblogging."

Rich media user experiences combined with real-time social interaction drives integration. Whether it's an acquisition or partnership the result is a new and improved tool set for us to communicate.

Live streaming from mobile phones is another red hot area of integration with Qik and Flixwagon announcing their ability to directly upload videos to YouTube a few weeks back.

Robert Scoble reported the Qik news on March 15th and generated some good discussion on quality settings for Qik videos. On the Qik blog Bhaskar Roy said, "Keeping with the mantra of being able to stream video from your cell phone to the world - with this integration, Qikkers can now stream to YouTube, Mogulus, Seesmic, Mobuzz, and all your blogs and websites - automatically just by pressing "Stream" on your cell phone!"

According to a Flixwagon press release, they announced their users will have a new tool,"the FliXee Widget which will stream live mobile-to-web broadcasts directly to Flixwagon users Websites, Blogs, and Social Networking sites. Additionally, Flixwagon users will now have the capability to deliver their mobile-to-web broadcasts directly to YouTube through their Flixwagon account."

Flixwagon media darling and Pop17 producer Sarah Meyers talked with Andy Plesser in this Beet.TV interview about the evolution of live streaming and the new Qik and Flixwagon mobile streaming APIs for YouTube.



It's all about integration.

YouTube to Stream Live Video in 2008? Co-founder Steve Chen Says Yes!

As part of the third episode of her new show Pop17, video blogger and producer Sarah Meyers scooped the YouTube live video streaming story when she caught up with co-founder Steve Chen at a recent YouTube party in NYC. In describing the episode, Lifecasting and Lifecasters, Meyers writes that, "A variety of live streaming platforms with social networks are propping up a new kind of online voice." Lifecasting pioneer Justin Kan along with iJustine, Chris Pirillo and Sarah Meyers herself represent a few of the many online voices. She lists "several common live streaming platforms: Mogulus, Justin.TV, Ustream, Blog.tv, Stickam, Yahoo Live, Qik." According to Chen, YouTube has been wanting to do live video and may enter that arena sometime later this year.



Related (courtesy of TechTicker.net):

• “YouTube Launching Live Video This Year, Chen Confirms“, ReadWriteWeb, 28 February 2008
• “Yahoo! Live and Ustream.TV", Tech Ticker, 29 February 2008
• “Confirmed: Live Video On YouTube This Year", TechCrunch, 29 February 2008

• “The Daily Poll: Live Video – Who Will Win?", Mashable, 29 February 2008
• “YouTube Will Win Live Video?", Mashable, 29 February 2008

Update: (Two more live streaming platforms worth checking out)

• Livevideo.com - The World is Watching
  
• Netineo - The Live Network
  

Mogulus and Qik Partner in Live Streaming

This news is more than a week old and almost slipped by me. It's about a significant and strategic integration of live mobile video streaming and a relevant technology development to discuss. I have to thank Robin Good for bringing it to my attention yesterday during our My ooVoo Day With... video conversation (Grazie Robin!)

On Feb. 5th, the Mogulus blog posted, "We are really excited to announce that Mogulus has integrated with mobile phone streaming provider Qik (http://www.qik.com). From now on, all Mogulus producers have the ability to go live with their mobile phone on their Mogulus channel."

Their previous post on Feb. 3rd, which stated their plan to integrate the two services, noted that, "Thanks to Robert Scoble who used Qik and Mogulus during his CES coverage in January - it became clear to both companies that an integration will be beneficial to producers using our platforms."

It's great to see two similar yet distinct companies partner like this, and also how end-users can influence this type of technology mashup. The Qik blog describes the integration in 3 easy steps and the Mogulus blog has more detailed information.

Here's a great video courtesy of video blogger Steve Garfield on how he used Qik, Mogulus and Twitter to cover Super Tuesday.

My ooVoo Day With... Robin Good

I was back for another session of My ooVooday With... and I had great video conversation with Robin Good and social media and blogging guru Sherman Hu and Allen Mostow who manages LA music artist Audra Hardt. I had been looking forward to this opportunity to meet the Master New Media guru and I also met a few new friends. We had a lively discussion about online video publishing tools and strategies. Some of the video tools mentioned included Qik, Mogulus, Kyte with ooVoo now joining the mix since you can both conduct and record a live multi-party videoconference. Robin added that Mogulus and Qik has integrated so producers can now stream live from their mobile phones directly to their Mogulus channel with Qik.

In additional to our live ooVoo session, Robin was simulcasting a live feed of our videoconference to his Qik page and you can view the archive recording below.



For some, videoconferencing technology can be cumbersome and awkward to use, but it was real easy to have an open group conversation using ooVoo. The user interface is both slick and intuitive in design and both the video and audio quality is actually quite good. The video runs at about 10 frames per second (fps) so motion is pretty smooth and I saw very little tiling or motion artifacts. The audio is quality is crisp and it works best if you have headphones as that helps to eliminate the echo. Good lighting is essential too so that your participants can see your facial expressions. The ooVoo web site has some good information on video quality.

I've been in the videoconferencing industry for 18 years and I find it remarkable that you can have a cross platform multi-party IP videoconference with up to 6 people... totally free!

My ooVooday With... seems to be a big hit for many bloggers as I've seen a number of ooVoo comments and reviews over the last week. Chris Brogan posted an interesting review on his blog and I second his kudos to Scott Monty of Crayon for organizing this incredible social experiment. You can also see Sherman Hu's post which includes a video recording of his ooVoo videoconference with Joseph Jaffe (JaffeJuice.com)

My next scheduled My ooVooday With... is this Sunday with iJustine.

Yahoo Launches Live! A New Live Streaming Service... Well, Sort of

In the midst of an impending takeover by Microsoft, Yahoo launched a new "experimental" live streaming service, called Yahoo! Live, which has already seems to have reached capacity on its first outing.

Both ReadWriteweb and TechCrunch reviewed the new site describing its functionality and Michael Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteweb, who tried to cover the launch live wrote, "It looks pretty good though early tests are experiencing scaling issues already. Apparently, the company that gets more web traffic than anyone on earth is incapable so far of handling 400 people watching 30 live video streams. Actually, a flood of early adopters just came in via Twitter and the thing promptly broke - completely as far as I can tell. The service combines many of the best practices developed by early explorers of the medium, tiny startups that must be very worried tonight. Part BlogTV, part Mogulus and just plain better than UStream"



















On the Yahoo! Live blog, Michael Quoc, Director of Advanced Products, describes the service as, "a new experiment in live video from the Advanced Products team at Yahoo!. Y! Live was dreamed up as a way to make it possible for anyone to create their own live video experience. Broadcast the concert you’re at. Webcast your own live DJ set. Lifecast. Build your own live video speed dating application. We’ve created a website and an API that lets you do all these things and many more."

Quoc continued that, "Keep in mind that Y! Live is an experimental release.... Y! Live is a limited capacity release, so bear with us as and we may reach our limits in periods of high traffic. Our top priority now is to hear your feedback – send your comments to ylive@yahoogroups.com, and follow our twitter feed to hear about headline broadcasts and notable things happening live."

Regarding it's experimental state, Chad Dickerson, Sr. Director of Yahoo's Advanced Product Team, commented on TechCrunch that, "Needless to say, we’re aware of and not surprised by the stability issues (ironically, someone sent me a message via Twitter about the servers getting pounded and Twitter timed out just before it delivered the message! C’est la vie.) This is an experiment (see our post on Yahoo! Next for more about the product and API — http://next.yahoo.net/archives.....s-watching ).

As it joins the ranks of it's live streaming competitors (Stickam, Justin.tv, Ustream, Mogulus and Blogtv) it will be interesting to see how Y! Live evolves and becomes more stable over time. Given that you gotta wonder what Google may have up it's sleeve.

UPDATE:
Sorry Y! Live but here's another TechCrunch review on the the launch, Yahoo Live Fails to Scale

Livecastr Debuts at Davos

A new live streaming mobile phone service was unveiled yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

In this TechCrunch post Michael Arrington reported that, "Amsterdam based LiveCastr, a service that lets users live stream video from their mobile phone... joins a parade of competitors that have launched over the last couple of years, including Mogulus (not mobile), Qik, and Flixwagon among others."

Qik has gained a fair amount of attention lately through Robert Scoble's jubilant endorsement. He's also in Davos and you can see his Davos video clips on his Qik page,

Arrington pointed out that, "The main difference between LiveCastr and Qik is that Qik requires a software download to the phone - meaning that only a handful of handsets can currently be used with the service... but it (Lifecastr) works with virtually all European 3G mobile phones and many U.S. ones as well, without the need to install any additional software."

I watched some of the videos on the LiveCastr web site and although the quality is very low resolution, much like its competitors, it is new technology that will improve over time. Live video streaming from your mobile phone is just one area where mobile is heating up.

Clearly, this is the year that mobile really starts taking off.

CES 2008 Live!

You can catch up on what's going on at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas through PodTech's live reporting powered by Mogulus (note their feed has been intermittent due to the Wi-Fi connection at the show):

You can also check out the updates on Qik.com/CES

And at PodTech's CES BlogHaus

VentureBeat - 14 Ways to Broadcast Yourself… Live

This recent article on VentureBeat is a great round up of current live video streaming and lifecasting services by David Adewumi on:

14 ways to broadcast yourself…live

In this excerpt, he writes, "Live TV is just starting to take off, and below I present a select list of competitors, and why I love ‘em, hate ‘em and sometimes both. I prefer Kyte and Mogulus for being able to create and broadcast an innovative show, while UStream.TV has aligned with big-name personalities like The Plain White T’s that are fun to take a look at. In the Mobile sphere, Qik seems to be the dominant force, allowing users to stream mobile to internet with only a 5-second delay, but FlixWagon will be hot on its tails when it releases a public alpha in January."

Others on the list include AT&T, blog.tv, Comvu, flixwagon, loobs, Justin.tv, operator11, seesmic and Stickam.

Dan Taylor posted a similar round up on his Fabric of Folly blog in August 2007 with many of the same companies at:

Round-up of DIY live video streaming services

Dan's list also included Veodia, YouCams, and MyStreams.tv.