An interesting thing happened during yesterdays iPhone launch and it wasn’t just observing Robert Scoble’s mastery of self promotion (in a good way of course). Thousands of people* who were not lining up for an iPhone, be that because they simply weren’t interested in doing so or as in my case were unable to due to geography, experienced the highs and lows of iPhone day vicariously through live streams.
The day wasn’t without issues, Kristopher Tate’s Zooomr/ Ustream feed had technical issues at times, but on the whole the experience was something special. From the interviews on the street, through to the screams of those entering the Apple store to applause, through to the first addition to America’s Funniest Live Video Streams 2020 when Tate had his credit card declined.
The difference on iPhone Day was that instead of turning to blogs or waiting for the mainstream media to report the facts hours later, we were all able to watch it all in first person. The promise of user generated live media was delivered. The seed of a revolution was planted.
Lifestreaming has been covered before on TechCrunch; I remain unconvinced about the likelihood of Lifestreams such as Justin.tv (the man, not the service) being anything more than a niche pursuit, yet what we saw on iPhone Day was different: this was Eventstreaming.
Eventstreaming is the missing link in Web 2.0’s challenge to network television.
Who could ever forget the coverage of the London Bombings in 2005 where user generated video featured as a main source of footage. Two years later and the technology has continued to improve; the step from recording footage of an event to streaming it live over the internet has been made.
Events can be outside of the control of the person recording the event, such as the iPhone launch, or staged. I’ve found myself tuning in to Chris Pirillo’s Live feed. Pirillo hosts a live tech show most nights and at times can have hundreds of viewers. It’s a staged event, but an event none the less. In these cases events have a bigger pull than lifecasts; time is too precious for many to watch Justin on Justin.tv driving a car but like actual television, we can and will find time to watch a staged event, or a stream of a non-staged major event such as the iPhone launch.
Of course, it would be absurd to suggest that tomorrow thousands will begin Eventstreaming, but there is already a factor at play that will drive the field: exposure. As Robert Scoble knows, the best way of promoting your brand (and in Scoble’s case it is Scoble himself) is to be there and be seen. Compare and contrast Zooomr to Mahalo. I caught a reference in passing, buried in one mainstream media report on an iPhone queue that the team from Mahalo were queuing for the phone. The direct benefit to Mahalo of the exercise, aside from Jason Calacanis now having 5 iPhones to give away? Not much at all; a mention in a newspaper or two at most. By comparison the Zooomr logo and brand were exposed to thousands (maybe even more) watching the Eventstream on Ustream, many of whom may never have heard of or used Zooomr before. Money could possibly buy that exposure, but it is well a truly beyond the reach of most. In marketing terms it was pure brilliance, and it will not go unnoticed. The first wave of Eventstreaming will be driven by smart startups who know a good thing when they see it, and who can’t afford to buy this sort of exposure any other way. Eventstreaming is the difference between just being there, and being seen.
(* my understanding of the Ustream feed from watching a discussion Kris Tate had with some one from Ustream was that the stream itself was delivered over multiple streams and that as a consequence the counter on the live stream I was watching did not reflect all viewers, only viewers to a particular stream. At the time the phone went on sale the feed I was watching had over 1000 viewers, an overall figure for those having watched was in excess of 40,000 according to another figure on Ustream).
I’m glad it’s finally over and launched. Now we can get back to our lives.
iPhone is on sale at the pple store website.
http://store.ap...e/iphone/iphone
why LineUP??????????????????
It’s quite mind boggling as to how fast the technology is evolving.
The funniest thing was watching Kris Tate’s credit card get declined on UStream.
Justin Kang is onto something! it’s odd while Im working on my startup I don’t listen to music much anymore. I just tune into Justin.TV for background noise and entertainment.
Ye it was great – lets do it again next week!
no need for a product launch, we will just wait for the store to open
Not a bad observation, Duncan. Our “eventstreaming” site launches on July 6th, with a focus on sports. I think lifecasting is about to get a little more interesting.
MikeW
Btw, the name of the company in #8 is SportsJunkie.tv.
Steve jobs is a master of viral marketing, creating Buzz and using publicity for the benefit of its products, thats why they have couple of block buster products to their name.
http://www.tekn...ld.blogspot.com
I come to read the comments made on an article after having a look at the number of comments on the main page.
But most of the time its really misleading. On the main page it says 11. But out here there are only 4!!!!!!!?
oops….all the comments are visible now? anyway
Hmm. Mogulus had way better live coverage which I noted on my blog:
http://www.cent...one-number-live
Zooomr had some kids face planted on it for the last bit of time, if you are going to do this, make it a friggin event. Show the crowd, talk to the crowd, talk to the hot dog guy, etc. The first bit of time it was stuck on scoble and his son. that does not make for great tv. The only time they moved he camera it seemed was when they were talking to a woman.
Enough already with the Mahalo plugs.
Just being there is not enough for a revolution, the content has to be compelling, which a video with Thomas Hawk talking while surfing the net is not.
As Bennet Brauer would say, scoble, hawk and tate are “Not camera friendly”
Garth
That’s exactly what I wanted to see auto-load on the page. Listening to annoying little rich valley fags waiting for iPhones has been a hobby of mine. Now that this technology is available, I can see annoying, choppy live streams whenever I want!
in fairness to Mahalo, they were handing out stickers (I now have iton my powerbook
to the crowd outside the Santa Monica Apple store who, like Palo Alto, also had it’s fair share of geeks, Web 2.0 founders and VCs all slobbering in line.
btw I got my iphone, yeh!!
Thanks for the nice write up Duncan. Covering the iPhone launch for ZooomrTV was certainly something that we hoped would help promote our brand. Zooomr doesn’t have big advertising budgets just yet. We’re a two man team, a 19 year old kid and a photographer, who want to change the world with photography.
Part of that means that we have to be resourceful as we develop, grow and bring Zooomr to maturity. We have embraced grass roots journalism from the beginning. Blogs, podcasts, videoblogs, social media sites, live casting — all have been used on a shoestring to allow Zooomr to compete with much larger corporations who have at hire some of the finest and most expensive PR agencies in the world.
Zooomr is able to promote like this more than anything because of the generosity of the Zooomr community who understand what we are doing and what Zooomr is all about. Central to the success of yesterday’s launch was that Zooomr stickers were *everywhere*. People were wearing them, they were used as the rope tape to form the entry line into the store. They were prominently featured on CNBC’s coverage of the event. But we never would have had the stickers except for the fact that one of our photographers Randyman generously at his own expense printed up 500,000 of them for us.
It was the Zooomr Community that had our CNBC coverage on uTube less than 15 minutes after it happened and that helped us promote Zooomr’s coverage in the blogosphere and with social medai. It is the Zooomr community that was with us, excited for us, and cheering things on. These are some of the best people that you will ever know or meet and it is a community that simply can’t be “bought.” Many in the community have sent us money, driven us to our data center at 3 am in the morning, brought us food when we were hungry and working insane hours. It was great to meet more of them in person at the launch and continue to see them online. All this despite the fact that Zooomr is very much a work in progress and not the most polished photo sharing site in the world. They believe, like us, in what we are building and know that we are creating something great for photographers and revolutionary for the stock photography industry.
The iPhone launch was great on a personal level for both Kristopher and I and we were glad that we were able to share it with the world. Listening to Bill Atkinson, one of Silicon Valley’s true pioneers talk about how Apple decided to use the “OK/Cancel” buttons instead of the “Do it / Cancel” buttons were priceless and we were so glad that we could share those moments with the rest of the world live. Also it was amazing listening to how he approaches his work as a photographer.
It wasn’t just Zooomr though who made the lifecasting of the iPhone launch a success. It was everyone there in the line and not in the line all over the world. Robert and Patrick Scoble, uStream, the SmugMug guys who kept not just Zooomr but everyone in the line fed with dinner and breakfast, Megan McCarthy who brought us beer (shhh. don’t tell the Palo Alto PD and Kristopher did not drink any of it) and all the truly wonderful people that we met, interviewed and had the privilege of spending time with.
Thomas Hawk
CEO, Zooomr
Oh yeah, and for some of the best photos of the event you can find them under the iPhonelaunch tag on Zooomr here: http://beta.zoo...?q=iphonelaunch
Zooomr is a joke of a company. The company has to beg for servers and thinks that it’s cool that it shows how poorly run it is. With such few employees you should focus on running a business that works. Zooomr is neither a business nor does it work.
Spoiled brats like Kris Tate need to grow up and people like Thomas Hawk need to realize that Zooomr needs to work before you can worry about promoting the hell out of it. Otherwise, you get Justin.tv where a lot of people checked out it, it failed, and they moved on.
Zooomr is a dead.
Justin.tv had better coverage and they seem better set up to handle mobile live streams.
I thought the Ustream coverage was brilliant. I watched from NYC, then Mall of America, then Palo Alto, then Hawaii.
Eventstreaming is definitely HOT as is Ustream.
Incredible.
Let’s ask ourselves two questions: how relevant do we really think this “event” was to the average American? Do we really believe that average Americans are going to flock en masse to spend hours watching eventstreams of “events” like a bunch of people waiting outside of an Apple store in Palo Alto for a product launch?
The idea that eventstreaming poses a threat to network television has to be one of most absurd arguments I’ve heard. There’s a very good reason that the mainstream media didn’t provide 24/7 coverage of the iPhone launch: 99.9999999999999999% of the American public wouldn’t care for it. Let’s be honest with ourselves. There are few events that deserve ongoing live coverage, and there are few events that will attract a non-negligible audience if live coverage is provided. Outlets like CNBC knew this: they typically provided short (1-2 minute) segments on the iPhone story, as seems reasonable. And I can guarantee you that many of the people who watched the people in those lines at Apple stores were less-than-impressed (to put it nicely).
Unless the Web 2.0 community starts to grasp the concept that content has to be compelling to a mainstream audience, it’s doomed to celebrate “revolutions” that just aren’t truly occurring in the real (i.e. mainstream) world most of us live in. What most Web 2.0 kool aid drinkers fail to realize is that even niche cable network shows receive exponentially more viewers than anything you’re going to find on Ustream. If a reality TV show about hairstylists on a second-tier cable network has an audience magnitudes greater than any eventstream ever has, I just don’t know what type of revolution Duncan believes this is. I can tell you one thing: it isn’t going to receive live coverage on CNN.
http://www.dram...-la-revolucion/
@8. “eventstreaming” of sporting events? Good luck with that. Better hope you get A LOT of advertising revenue you can bank before the NFL, NBA, MLB, NCAA NHL, NASCAR, IRL, Formula1, WWE, PGA, LPGA, etc, sue you out of existence.
Great article, and great comments. For us at Ustream, the event was all about supporting our Ustreamers, including Robert, Thomas, and Kris, as well as Ben Higginbotham, who got nearly as large an audience while Ustreaming from the Mall of America Apple Store.
I visited the Palo Alto line twice–once at 1 AM the night before, and it really had a great community feel.
There’s no doubt that mainstream journalists with a production van and years of experience can produce a more polished broadcast than a couple of entrepreneurs who’ve been camping out for 48 hours. But that’s not the point of Ustreaming, live streaming, eventstreaming, or whatever you want to call it.
Our focus is on letting people deliver a different kind of experience. It’s not for everyone, but it is attracting and audience, and it may serve as raw input material for professional broadcasting in the future.
Thanks again everyone!
@ drama I agree. and I really, really don’t think Justin.tv has anything to do with this trend at the moment – this is media in our times: all the time, always on, always around. It has nothing to do with anybody or anything but technology, timing, and users evolving That’s like giving Rupert Murdoch credit for social networking being born. That, too, was timing, technology and users evolving.
I know it was just a small percentage of the population overall going bananas over iPhone, but I loved watching it unfold.
@ DPM, actually, Nascar at least two years ago was looking at this (livestreaming) to give to fans on handhelds in the stands, if memory serves. There will definitely be plenty of sports teams that adopt this kind of stuff because it opens up another opportunity for them, and I don’t think it’s foolish for somebody to create a platform for that transaction to take place. If you could get the right relationships, absolutely. It’d be a cool subscription service.
Honestly, if anybody gets the chance, go to CES this year and check out the video tech vendors, or the VON show. VON is up in SF once a year and they’ve added a video pavillion. It’ll open up a lot of visibility into what you’ll see coming and how things will play out. I wrote a recap of the VON show this past spring for CenterNetworks.com.
What you see there is what’s coming, versus what you see now, which is really what’s passing a lot of the times
DPM: exactly. A Louisville Courier-Journal reporter was actually ejected from an NCAA basketball game by the NCAA for live *blogging*. The NCAA claims that this constituted a “broadcast” of the game, whose rights had already been sold to ESPN. It will be interesting to see if this issue finds its way into a courtroom, where a judge will have to decide if blogging can be defined as a form of broadcasting. Regardless of that, any startup involved with unofficial live video at professional sporting events is going to face the wrath of the leagues and the broadcasters who often pay hundreds of millions of dollars for broadcast rights. A number of them are already involved in lawsuits against YouTube.
Patricia: leagues like NASCAR are already doing some fairly innovative things. Look at the NASCAR RaceView service and MLB.tv. If leagues ever go the route of eventstreaming, you can almost be assured that they’re going to license technology or do things completely in-house. Smaller startups with commoditized technology are likely to find themselves shut out. In many areas, like professional sports, the most any startup could realistically hope for is the ability to serve as a service provider. Many of the startups in the online video space have visions to become media companies (because media companies have almost unlimited upside) whereas technology service providers have much more limited upside. The question they should ask themselves is: why would any of the entities that own this valuable content give me a cut of total revenues as opposed to simply paying me as a service provider?
Also recognize that, just as with professional video content, issues related to broadcast rights for sporting events can be extremely complicated and involve many parties. For instance, no Major League Baseball team has the right to do its own online video venture because digital rights for all MLB teams are licensed to MLB Advanced Media, which is a subsidiary of MLB.
I watched all the Ustream coverage and it was awesome!
Zooomr was great and so was Benjamin Higgebotham (the countdown at Mall of America was exciting)!
I’m mainstream America and I love it!
Live internet is very exciting…
The Ustream.tv iPhone thing was very cool.
I can see this being done potentially at every sporting event: football tailgates, superbowl parties, PGA tour events, etc.
It obviously won’t have the numbers of the TV event, but the site that grabs the most of these event streams will be very succesful.
I think Ustream is well on their way to being bought by Google/Yahoo….
The iPhone is revolutionary.
It’ll be interesting to see how this continues to develop and what the effect on traditional news media will be.
@ drama, my friends sold nascar their technology
Interesting dialogue here. Why does anyone think that live streaming is for mainstream America?
If we believe in “long tail” then this point is moot. There’s a very interesting live stream for everyone out there, one to make, and several to watch.
Honestly… do you think the anyone in the wider world has any interest in experiencing a BREADLINE vicariously. Only when you live a completely virtual existence could such a concept become interesting. I thinkm thats why the talking heads on sites like these are so out of touch with the real market.
Marc at one point we have 800 people viewing, people were coming in and out of the stream so it was likely to be thousands.
ustream live broadcasting was great, infact Robert standing in line news, and seeing on live broadcast made me drive to Palo Alto middle of the night to see the action first hand. I chatted with Chris (ustream, long time friend of mine), Robert (scobilizer), Kurt (lendingclub), Megan (valleywag), folks from Diggnation, Youtube etc…..It was memorable experience chatting with all these fine folks at the wee hours of the historic iDay!!
You’re all fools. Hahaha. You have fallen for my marketing scam. It’s amazing that people in Silicon Valley claim they care so much about the world and doing good yet they care 100000x more about the launch of my iPhone than about the plight of the environment which they love to talk about (e.g. “I drive a Prius” or “I don’t drink bottled water anymore to reduce my carbon footprint”) yet they live in San Mateo and drive to San Jose every day! Fools.
Patricia: that’s my point. Entities like NASCAR are much more likely to acquire (either through licensing our an outright buyout) media technologies that are of interest. They are very unlikely to outsource major media technology components to a startup trying to become a consumer media company (and give them a cut of ongoing revenues in the process). That’s the point I’m trying to make. When it comes to online video related to sports, for instance, startups are either likely to become service providers or will have to license content from the leagues with the hope of building a profitable business on their own.
Jeremiah Owyang: I would like to make a couple of points.
1. Referencing the long tail is not entirely relevant because you are first assuming that a significant number of people even have a desire to watch eventstreaming. One of the things that amuses me the most when dealing with the Web 2.0 community is that when you point out that something isn’t popular and has no mainstream appeal, somebody will simply say “Well it’s just part of the longtail.” Genius!
2. Even thousands of people watching an eventstream is the media equivalent of a drop of dew on a single leaf in the Amazon rainforest. As I illustrated in my blog post on this topic, a show about hairstylists on a second-tier cable network has an audience orders of magnitude greater than anything on Ustream.
It’s apparent to me that there are quite a few Web 2.0 people who have no understanding whatsoever about the audience metrics of mainstream media and what large advertisers reasonably require in order to be sufficiently interested in significant advertising deals. I’m not saying that online video in all of its various forms can’t be successful or profitable, but I think many people here just don’t quite grasp that the numbers and way the media and advertising industries work create a significant challenge. I would not be celebrating any revolution just yet.
Furthermore, I would love to read a better explanation of the methods used to measure audiences at services like Ustream. For instance, if I load a stream and leave one minute later, and then come back an hour later and watch for five minutes, how is that measured? Is that two streams or one stream? Can Ustream track the fact that I didn’t really watch the stream for very long either time? Additionally, what does Ustream know about the viewers of a stream? As mentioned, even thousands of viewers of a specific stream is nothing worth getting excited over, however if we assume for argument’s sake that one day this will be a popular platform, prospective advertisers are going to demand accurate measurement of the audiences.
@Drama 2.0
You write long posts and are passionate about your position, unfortunately you are dead wrong.
Its laughable to suggest no one is willing to watch eventstreaming. How many “events” are going on today in the US? Thousands. And people are watching. Whether it is a sports press conference, a church convention, a red carpet event in Hollywood, or the release of a endangered species back into the wild. They are all events. Time and time again, we have seen people’s willingness to watch these events.
Humans have watched “events” since the beginning of time from public hangings, to weddings, to eclipses, to chariot races. People love events, and the medium or method from which they watch (ie Ustream) is immaterial of the event itself.
Right-on Eric!
Drama 2.0 indeed…do you work for the NAB?
Mass marketing isn’t dying – it’s dead. It’s all about the niche audience. The advent of cable in the 70’s is a precursor to what the web 2.0 initiatives will deliver over the next few years – only exponentially smaller niches and smaller and smaller audiences – cable made it work quite well, thanks you very much. Eventstreaming is one small variation on a coming revolution in news coverage – LOCAL news coverage. I submit that smaller audiences become even more valuable as their location and demographics are known.
While the hoopla surrounding the iPhone launch as an eventstream did attract an audience – on a national scale – can you make some assumptions about who those people are? Are they an audience that would be perfectly suited to an advertiser? Say someone who has a competing product to the iPhone? How valuable would a thousand viewers be to the advertiser?
The bigger point is that organic, UGC-like news gathering, from events to high school sports to a severe thunderstorm in YOUR neghborhood attracts an identifiable audience. That has value and there are a number of attempts under way to democratize the newsgathering process away from traditional media and into the hands of those who make their own news judgements. It also brings new advertisers into the mix at the ZIP+4 level.
Read the audience research on local news over the last 20 years – even national news is suffering from lack of relevancy to most viewers. Eventstreaming and LIVE UGC are about to change things and it won’t be about attracting a mass audience – just the right one.
Ever so slowly the people who pay for most of the news and event coverage you see now are rejecting the mass marketing model for the niche market identifiable online – eventstreaming is just the tip of the iceberg.
Stay tuned.
Eric: somehow your comprehension of what we’re debating here has taken a wrong turn. We are not talking about whether or not there are events people have some interest in. We’re talking about eventstreaming as described by Duncan. And when it comes to that, riddle me this: where were all of the viewers? Out of 300 million Americans, apparently only a number in the thousands felt compelled to watch eventstreams of the iPhone launch.
Of course there are events. And of course people have an interest in them. However, how many of these events are compelling enough to cause the average American to want to watch an eventstream?
Duncan’s argument is that the seeds of a revolution were planted yesterday and that eventstreaming, in the form discussed here, represents the missing link in Web 2.0’s challenge to network television. I have rebutted that argument. I have not argued that events are of no interest to people, which is what you somehow seem to believe. I simply stated that mainstream media is well-equipped to better cover these in a fashion that appeals to the average American whose time is limited.
That said, let’s look at what you’re arguing. You claim that there are events people have interests in, such as press conferences, church conventions, etc. I (obviously) agree. The mainstream news media *already* covers events that are likely to be of importance to us. Whether it’s on television, in a newspaper, in a magazine, etc., events of interest are the subject of reporting in the mainstream media. With the iPhone launch for instance, many major news agencies provided a segment from an Apple store. Note, however, that it was a segment, not a 24/7 eventstream. The logic behind this is simple: the news agencies know that the vast majority of the viewers would tune out if they started providing lengthy coverage of an event that was only truly important to a small portion of the American public.
A few of your other examples:
1. Live coverage of important sports press conferences is already often provided by local media outlets when warranted.
2. Many red carpet events in Hollywood are the subject of live coverage.
3. The release of an endagered species back into the wild may receive a segment on the news.
So let’s recap the points you seemed to have missed here:
1. I have not claimed that “no one is willing to watch eventstreaming.” I did claim that “this is not the average American’s cup of tea (or Coca-Cola).” People have increasingly limited time and more choices than ever, hence the demand from consumers to time-shift video content and consume it in short clips. This trend does not seem to support mass mainstream adoption of eventstreaming; most people don’t have the luxury of taking 4 hours out from their day to watch an eventstream.
2. I have not claimed that people don’t love events. I did claim that the mainstream media already provides adequate coverage of them, and more often than not serves as a filter for determining how much coverage should reasonably be given. Mainstream media is also are much more likely to provide *quality* coverage of an event. You, and other people here, apparently don’t recognize that events, like press conferences, a red carpet party, etc. are already being covered by the mainstream media so the concept that some geek with a camera on his head eventstreaming on Ustream is not exactly a revolution.
3. My conclusion is quite clear: eventstreaming as contemplated here is not going to dethrone the mainstream media and this is what we’re talking about. Logically, this does not mean that there isn’t a relatively small group of avid fans who will find nothing more pleasurable than watching live 24/7 coverage of all sorts of events, much of which would be considered boring and low quality by the average American. The fact that eventstreaming is only likely to appeal to a niche audienece raises a number of questions about how viable business models can be built around it, etc.
KrizBiz: no I don’t work for the NAB, however I have a lot of experience with advertising and marketing. I don’t have a problem with niche audiences. They’re extremely valuable if they can be harnessed. However, here’s the biggest challenge:
You ask how valuable a thousand highly-targeted viewers would be to an advertiser. Obviously that depends, but I can tell you that major advertisers (the ones who account for a sizable portion of the total ad spend), need big numbers to drive tangible results. When your company does billions of dollars in revenues annually, allocating resources to do a small ad buy that is going to reach even a few thousand viewers simply isn’t feasible. The cost of actually going out and doing thousands of those deals to reach an audience capable of benefitting the business simply exceeds the potential return. Anybody who tells you that they can go to a major brand or major ad agency and get significant interest in spending a reasonable amount to reach an audience in the thousands obviously hasn’t had experience in the industry.
There’s an assumption out there that you can have almost infinitely small niche audiences and have a viable advertising business. That’s not the case. Regardless of how niche your audience is, you still have to have a certain threshold of viewers to have a property that is saleable to major advertisers. Whether you achieve this threshold organically or via some platform for aggregation, ad buyers base their decisions primarily on statistics and right now I see a lot of people who don’t realize that because they’ve never been involved with the industry. Maybe a VC analogy will work:
1. A major VC has just raised a $1 billion fund. A startup looking to raise a $250,000 seed round is probably rejected, regardless of how promising the company looks, because the economics don’t work. The VC’s capital has to be spent more efficiently.
2. A major ad agency is given $25 million by a major brand. A local eventstreamer with a few thousand viewers asking for $2,000/month is probably not of interest, regardless of how well his demographic matches the target demographic, because the economics don’t work. The brand’s money has to be spent more efficiently.
If there’s any entity best equipped to solve these challenges, it’s mainstream media. Let’s take your concept of user-generated news gathering. Say that a local citizen eventstreams local high school sports games. He now has content that is potentially of value to many people in his community. What’s his best option for having it distributed and monetized? He could use a service like Ustream, but he still doesn’t necessarily get the best reach to his community and he’s obviously not in a position to call up a major brand or ad agency and get them to buy advertising (that’s just not how it works). His best option is to partner with an established local media outlet, which can distribute his content and include it in advertising packages they’re already selling, compensating him for his work. That local media outlet also serves as a quality filter, ensuring to advertisers and the local community that the user-generated content being provided is comercially-acceptable.
You are dead on that mainstream media is facing changing dynamics and challenges of its own, however the idea that mainstream media is going to be removed from the equation by hoardes of eventstreamers and citizen journalists just doesn’t work because the problems they face are even more challenging than the ones the mainstream media faces.
Patricia and KrizBiz
idealism+naivety=bankruptcy.
KrizBiz your “the revolution will not be televised” mentality is refreshing but naive. Sure things are changing in media. But speaking specifically of sports and someone wanting to start an “eventstreaming” service targeted at sports..well, they are wading into an multi-billion dollar business. All these organizations already have the means to “eventstream” if they want to. Do you really think that just because there is “demand” that someone wanting to “eventstream” a sporting even for which they do not have the broadcast rights is going to be successful. So, if MikeW thinks he can outbid ABC, NBC, CBS, TNT, FOX, ESPN, GolfChannel, TBS, MSGNetwork, and every other regional and local broadcast entity for rights to “eventstream” sporting events, hey, more power to him. But all the combined VC funding in the world would not be able raise enough capital to outbid those guys. Here’s a homework assignment…what did NBC bid to broadcast the NFL on Sunday night? And NO ONE has the rights for rebroadcast.
So, unless you can outbid them, good luck!
The YouTube model is great, until you start stealing content. Take out the stolen content and you basically have the internet version of America’s Funniest Videos coupled is Web 2.0 infomercials. How original is that?
Why do you thing the YouTube guys sold to Google? Because they knew the content owners were closing in on them. And why do you think Google overpaid? Because they knew they had to set aside enough money to settle the many lawsuits for content thievery they knew was coming.
So, again, good luck trying to get rights to “eventstream” sporting events. Short of “eventstreaming” your company’s softball game, you kids soccer game, or your buddy’s bowling tournament, you are going to run into problems. Hell, you MIGHT be able to get away with “eventstreaming” Little League games..until it comes to the regional games. Then expect a knock on the door from ABC/ESPN.
Drama (great name by the way, very fitting),
I clearly understand what you are saying, in fact your words “Let’s ask ourselves two questions: how relevant do we really think this “event” was to the average American? Do we really believe that average Americans are going to flock en masse to spend hours watching eventstreams of “events” like a bunch of people waiting outside of an Apple store in Palo Alto for a product launch?”
You my friend are missing the point. No matter the event, there will be a niche who wants to see it. The combined number of all these niches is significant and yes, does demonstrate a turning point in how media is delivered. It may not be through Ustream or a similar service, but the 24/7 coverage of these events will increase I assure you. For advertisers it filters directly to those perspective buyers.
@DPM Good luck streaming sporting events besides little league games?? Obviously the actual events themselves won’t be streamed, but not real sure how you can stop a football fan with a blog who has a EVDO card and a camera streaming in the superbowl parking lot while tailgating. The possibilities go on and on. Will large numbers watch? Probably not, but as Ustream’s figures from yesterday show (70,000 total uniques) that IS significant. The die hard fans of whatever event will watch. That translates to money for advertisers. Why? Because those 70,000 are exactly the people they are trying to target.
@D2.0″If a reality TV show about hairstylists on a second-tier cable network has an audience magnitudes greater than any eventstream ever has, I just don’t know what type of revolution Duncan believes this is.”
Did you really compare ANY cable tv show (”2nd tier” or not) to an online video? That is simply not an “apples to apples” comparison (you should know better). I don’t know many, if any, that see video online unless it’s on/from youtube.
Most folks I know sit down in front of a TV when they want to see video, and control it via handheld (eg. remote) with very little interaction other than selecting the content. There will have to be some major changes to the standard household entertainment center before one can compare the viewer numbers between the 2 very different content types.
@44 Sure, it can happen. People steal things every day. You obviously have no idea the lengths the NFL or any professional leagues for that matter, will go to protect its brand. Do you realize that the NFL grants right to even use the NAME Super Bowl. That means if you are some radio station and want hold a contest to send listeners to the Super Bowl, you can’t use the words “Super Bowl” to promote your contest unless you’ve been granted permission by the NFL. You have to use words like “Big Game in ” So, sure someone can “eventstrean” a boring tailgate party that losers with no life can sit in their basement and watch and pretend to be a part of it. But, I can pretty much guarantee you that both the stadium owner, the local team and the league will do everything they can to go after the dweeb when they find out. If anything you “stream” happens to infringe on any copyrights or trademarks believe me, whatever advertising revenue you get from the miniscule audience you have will not be enough to pay for the lawsuits. I don’t think 70K is really a compelling audience number. Unless you get it every hour every day, which I doubt you can maintain
And if the definition of “eventstreaming” a sporting event is standing outside the stadium and broadcasting what people are doing, well, good luck with that, too.
Hey know-it-alls, shut up!
@D2.0, your comments here come to a total of 2,345 words, while Duncan’s post is 699 words, what gives?
Feeling self-important these days?
Please quit spewing, it really is ridiculous.
Not a bad observation, Duncan. Our “eventstreaming” site launches on July 6th, with a focus on sports. I think lifecasting is about to get a little more interesting.
Bob, Editor
Gary Carvolth Voice of the Common Man
http://www.garycarvolth.com
I knew “Drama 2.0″ didn’t have what it takes to refute an argument, and it shows his complete lack of respect for any thoughts other than his own (though some insight is found in his commentary). He should stick to his blog and save us the time of reading his very long-winded and self-congratulatory opinions.