The post below is written by Robert Scoble, a top blogger and the founder FastCompanyTV.
Robert has been one of the earliest adopters of cell phone video, which offers the ability to stream live to the Internet, with the primary tradeoff being relatively poor video quality. He’s extensively tested all of the major emerging services in this area, including Kyte, Qik and Flixwagon, among others.
This is a post I didn’t want to write. Why? For the last six months I’ve been using Qik’s live video service off of my cell phone. I’m the top user there, with most views, most videos, and all that. I’ve used that service to take videos inside the first production Tesla, Annie Leibovitz as she showed us around her latest photos of famous people, Google press conferences, Ansel Adams’ son at the top of Glacier Point in Yosemite, Bono at the World Economic Forum, and more than 700 other videos as well.
Qik has done something remarkable: it put a TV studio in my pocket. I can get live video onto the Internet faster than I can make a phone call (Qik takes two clicks to start streaming, a phone call takes 12 clicks on my phone’s keypad). Even better, while doing a video you can watch live and you can send text chat messages to my phone while I am filming. While we were racing around Santa Monica in Elon Musk’s new Tesla (he’s the chairman of the board and was giving us a killer demo) we had hundreds of people watching my cell phone along with Jason Calacanis’ phone, which was shooting the same view from his Corvette alongside. As Elon was driving we had hundreds of people asking questions about the new Tesla. This was interactivity the world had never seen.
At the same time a company in Israel, FlixWagon, has been competing with Qik. I liked FlixWagon too. The quality on their video was slightly better than Qik’s although I went with Qik because they had a better live experience, at least on my phone. Other cell phone videographers, though, like Sarah Meyers loved Flixwagon. When I visited Israel recently I interviewed the Flixwagon guys and they are whip smart and really nice too.
Which gets me to why this is the post I never wanted to write. I have been treated absolutely wonderfully by the Qik team. They call me often, make sure I’m having a great experience, and have fixed many of the problems I have been having as I push their service into places it simply wasn’t really designed for. My interview with Annie Liebovitz, for instance, was done in a museum that had absolutely no wifi or cell phone service. So, I used up every bit of memory on my phone and gingerly carried my cell phone back outside where it started sending information again. I’ve had AT&T’s 3G service die right in the middle of many of my interviews (most troublingly right in the middle of an interview with Sun Microsystems’ CEO Jonathan Schwartz) and Qik got on those problems quickly.
Anyway, back to the fight between Kyte, Qik, and Flixwagon over your cell phone video experience. Last year I was Kyte’s top user too. Why did I switch to Qik? Because I saw that cell phone video would let me extend my brand into places no other video network was letting me get to. I was the only one doing cell phone videos from the World Economic Forum, for instance, something that got me a lot of attention and followers. I told Kyte’s CEO, Daniel Graf, tons of times over the past seven months to get video streaming into his product. At first he resisted, thinking it wasn’t that big a deal, but on Friday I finally tested it out on my cell phone and was impressed enough to give Kyte a second look.
That led me to this post. Here’s why I think Kyte will dominate over Qik and Flixwagon:
- The distribution system that Kyte has built is much better than either Qik or Flixwagon. Translation: the embeddable player that Kyte.tv has is much better than Qik or Flixwagon, more on that in a second.
- The chat room that Kyte has built is much better than Qik or Flixwagon and can be participated in from other cell phones, something that Qik and Flixwagon can’t do.
- The ability to mix videos from your webcam, live videos streaming from your web cam, recorded videos from camcorders, or from places like YouTube, along with both recorded and streamed videos from your cell phone goes way beyond what Qik and Flixwagon have done today.
- Kyte.tv can play videos on an iPhone today. Neither Qik or Flixwagon can do that.
- Kyte.tv can play videos on a Nokia today. Both from your recordings and other people’s. Neither Qik or Flixwagon can do that.
- Kyte.tv is partially funded and supported by Nokia. That might not sound like a big deal, but it is. Nokia is using Kyte’s service internally too, and I’m sure Nokia is giving Kyte better engineering support than it’s giving Qik or Flixwagon.
- Kyte.tv is way ahead of Qik and Kyte in getting real mainstream celebrities like 50 cent on its service, which means its growth is way stronger.
Why do I say that Kyte’s distribution system is stronger? Well, the Kyte.tv player has some significant advantages over the Qik one.
- When embedded it can be set to play the latest video, or a specific video. Qik can only play the specific video you embedded in (I hear they are changing this, but even if they do the second part makes this not as useful). Flixwagon’s gadget lets you show your blog’s readers other videos you’ve done, but not the chat.
- The chat room is always the same. This makes interactivity much quicker on the Kyte.tv video player. Many of my Qik videos don’t have any comments, or only have one or two. This makes those videos seem lame. Compare to Kyte, though, where everyone talks about you all day long, and it is a better place. Plus Kyte’s chat is much nicer and can contain video and audio comments (Qik can only have text comments) and Kyte’s can come from Facebook or other Nokia phones. Major win for Kyte here. I love participating in Kyte’s chat room from my cell phone because I can leave audio comments. I’ve gotten in some interesting conversations done with nothing but audio from other people. Audio is a lot easier to do from your cell phone than text or even video, particularly if you have a crappy cell phone camera or you don’t want to look like a dork out in public holding the cell phone up to take video of you.
-
I like the Kyte player on Facebook better than anything that Qik or Flixwagon has done yet. Kyte’s can be branded to yourself and you can make your own customized Facebook app for your own Facebook profile. So, TechCrunch can have its own Kyte app, which is much better for branding purposes.
Add all these together and I don’t see how Qik or Flixwagon can beat Kyte anymore in the cell phone video game. What do you think?
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enough with the weekend cronies. too much melodramatic blah blah blah.
first,
scoble - -
on the self-pic without tears and a hankie.
Robert, great review…thanks!
Excellent thoughts, Robert.
BTW, I read that video on iPhone 2.0 will be disabled like VoIP except for wifi.
Idea == dead.
What’s the point of instant video if you have to be in a t-mobile hotspot. PLUS, you have to pay $120 a month, then you have to pay for t-mobile access on TOP of that.
I remember way back you made a post about flash on iPhone, and it wasn’t supported. This makes me think of that.
kyte.tv kicks a** neday. But I have been using qik for over a month now, so how will it be like for Mr.Scoble if he makes change and shifts to kyte.tv?
Doesn’t anyone proof read their copy anymore ?
“live video service off of my cell phone.”
Come on, “off of” is terrible English.
oooh you had me at
“Kyte.tv can play videos on an iPhone today.”
Neither Qik or Flixwagon can do that.
& you sold me at
“your own customized Facebook app for your own Facebook profile”
Can we get this hooked up now with the iPhone?
@CoachDeb
Co-Author of
http://TwitterHandbook.com
mark - i don’t see a problem with that language.
Conflict of Interest? Isn’t Kyte paying you Robert?
Pay for play?
Kyte is “paying” 50 Cent. Its not like 50 Cent chose Kyte. But I Agree Robert, money talks.
Arrington: using two prepositions next to each other often leads to bad grammar.
“live video service off of my cell phone.” incorrect
“live video service off my cell phone.” correct
http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/probPrep.asp
Jessica: I am not paid by Kyte or Qik or Flixwagon. I cover this in an interview that Scott Bourne did with me yesterday here: http://www.vimeo.com/1168143
Scoble,
You have provided most of the features that ARE outstanding in Kyte, and that lack in Qik or Fixwagon, this is more enough for these companies to get them on roll and get back on track.
Kyte although has some great innovative ways to enhance the embedded video, which is why its so popular. the ability to share & bran your videos is what these video sharing startups have to focus on. I hope YouTube should be coming with Live Streaming pretty faster and which will add support for Mobile Device included!
Great post, but mostly from your point of view & usage. The outcome of this article will not show a great impact as its been single-man usage cum review, the features and usage varies depending on users, availability of network (bandwidth & speed).
Thanks for the review. Embedded players that can play both a recent or a specific video is great, enables distributed live video. I can add my favorite live broadcasters to my blog’s side bar. While on the show, a chicklet can show how many places are currently broadcasting the live video.
why do all his pictures make him look so ugly. He needs a hair cut , a diet and some decent glasses. Thought these elite bloggers were earning lots of money. Even arrington looks bad in his pics.
Mobile devices are turning our Worlds around. A few years ago we saw them as phones with a few other features. Today a phone if one of the features, and it’s not even the most important in some cases. Here’s a link to an article about why we want more.
Seeing how fixed broadband service providers are trying to limit users’ bandwidth usage, I seem mobile service providers have already started too.
I’ve been using Qik and keeping Kyte on standby, and here’s my problem:
Qik doesn’t take as many steps to get a video rolling. I don’t need all those feature you want, all the time. I want the video to go without Kyte’s menus. With Qik, I hit “stream” and off it goes. Plus the Twitter integration.
Kyte may have a better front end, but the back end needs to be far more customizable.
Michael: http://www.zooomr.com/search/p.....Scobleizer more photos, pick your favorite ugly photo of me.
Andrew: I get what you’re getting at. Qik doesn’t make you choose between channels and all that. But, on the other hand, Kyte is more flexible because I can publish to different channels. Why should my FastCompanyLive videos go to the same channel as my videos of my kid crawling around the floor go to?
@19
zooomr.com/z/photos/zoom/3126833/size-16/
Where’s the original size?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8.....8/sizes/o/
And that is why no one will ever use zooomr for real. I just thought I’d mention that.
http://zooomr.com/z/photos/zoom/3126833/size-16/
There’s only 1 url allowed per post, so here is the clickable version. Zooomr sucks.
Thanks for the review Scoble. Great advice and very thorough!
One correction on your article in regards to:
Kyte.tv can play videos on a Nokia today. Both from your recordings and other people’s. Neither Qik or Flixwagon can do that.
Correction and my use case:
I can load qik.com on my Nokia N95 via my mobile web browser and view my recordings, search for profiles by user (which in turn will get me to your latest videos), and watch the latest videos uploaded to qik.
Have you tried that out?
@Robert You’re absolutely right about separating out personal from work, but I’m not sure Kyte has gotten it done right either. For instance, I can’t figure out how to do more than a short video, not live. It’s not intuitive.
Qik does need to add some kind of category/channel functionality for the exact problem you describe, or Kyte needs to duplicate Qik’s simple, instant streaming capability. They’re each missing part of the other.
Called it here a ways back too, after returning from SXSW.
http://www.ianschafer.com/2008.....s-twitter/
This should be an interesting topic to follow in the next 6 months.
Thanks Robert!
Good one Robert.
Like your blog, your posts on other people’s are principally promotional crap, not insightful.
Mike, not sure why you need such lame ass guest posts, we want thought leaders as you often say not drivel, we can get that everywhere.
Great review scoble. I haven’t used any of them to shoot videos, but have watched plenty of them on qik, a few on flix, and none on kyte. I wish that any of these services would be compatible with WM devices, or the iPhone. Ive been on a WM phone for 2 years now, and am almost definitely jumping ship for the 3g iPhone. I know flix and qik both showed compatibility with the iPhone the other day, so I am praying that they will be by july or august so I can finally be able to use this service myself.
Robert,
I love your passion for the latest technology you test and support. I got introduced to Qik because of you. I have seen your love for ustream earlier but it had not compelled me to switch to it.
Now you are betting on Kyte.tv because they added video streaming, but its not compelling enough.
Kyte still has the challenge of playing catchup in live video streaming. You seemed to have switched as a pr person who was updated by kyte CEO about their new product feature. What would be the motivation of many smaller bloggers who use Qik or Flixwagon and have their established base of followers setup? Also, not having support on iphone or facebook seems simple things they can all do.
Its interesting to have more options and seeing the market heating up.
But I think the real winner will be one who can engage and hold on to their users.
bob: Qik is coming onto Windows Mobile phones soon. I’ve seen it working already and it’s pretty cool. iPhone is harder because:
1. We don’t have 3G yet.
2. The camera sucks.
3. There isn’t any API support for video yet.
We’ll see how many of those get fixed on July 11 when we get our first 3G iPhones.
sujamthe: good points. But remember that the market is 99.999999% in front of us. Qik hasn’t signed up that many users. Most of the future users of cell phone videos will come in the future and haven’t decided on services yet. So, even if Qik locks in their few thousand users, that isn’t the prize they really are working toward.
my experience with Kyte: bullies who demand attention, are ungracious, and think they can stand over writers for a link. I’ll use anybody but them in the future.
Robert, I’m dying to begin live broadcasting. The nokia was too expensive for me to buy, but I’m hoping the new iphone will do the trick. Thanks for leading the way and providing advice.
Thanks for those interesting insights. I think I’ll have a look at Kyte, but Qik sounds good too. Ease of use and iPhone will be a powerful combination.
You are who you are and that’s just the way you look. We don’t need to trust data from someone who ‘looks good’ - I prefer getting the real story - even if it comes from someone that someone else thinks might be ugly.
The dork factor - every time I see my ugly image live on the screen I start to cringe. Doh.
Duncan: nice people go a long way for me too and Qik’s people are the nicest in the industry. http://www.twitter.com/michaelf is the best developer I’ve met in terms of helpfulness and all that. If there’s one thing that’ll keep me on Qik, it’s that.
scoble needs to get a life and excercise…life is not all about technology and the next killer app….
Is this the same Robert Scoble who was bashed 2x over the past 3 months here because he sold out? It’s such a cute thing you two have — anything for eyes/pv apparently? Why isn’t this on your employer’s blog?
Why can’t all 3 win?
MP: can’t anyone have a good debate? I don’t mind being bashed. Bring it on! And, yes, why not do it to energize/engage an audience?
Good post Robert.
We are all about enabling people to stream live from their mobile phones to the world - easily and qikly
From 2-clicks to going live with your Nokia, Windows Mobile and now iPhone - you can have a high quality video and interactive experience with our friends, family and the world, where the world is not just the Qik embeddable widget that you can place anywhere (blogs/microblogs, websites, social networks) but anyplace the user wishes it be - Mogulus, Justin.tv, etc.
Built as a platform we not only enable people to stream live to any network, but also enable them to get their content through RSS feeds that can be viewed from RSS readers both on the desktop (e.g. iTunes, Google Reader) or mobile devices (e.g. podcasting app on Nokia, RSS reader on Win Mobile, etc.)
- Bhaskar @ Qik
Kyte also has 5x the funding of that of Qik and 23x, that of Flixwagon. I won’t discount them just yet.
I’d have to agree with Robert. I like Qik but kyte’s platform is more capable and sophisticated. That said, kyte is more of a b2b play than qik or flixwagon so maybe these other two can carve out a niche for consumers. There’s a reason we haven’t seen kyte demo iPhone recording - its something that doesn’t even interest them.
I have a feeling that google will want to scoop up qik or flixwagon soon. This would be such a great add-on for youtube, and they can handle the server load. I doubt qik or flixwagon could handle a crazy server load quite yet.
I guess theres a chance that google/youtube is already working on a service like this though
I’ve downloaded the newest Kyte (the same version on my N95 before) and I still can’t figure out how to stream a live video, but I sure can organize them.
I still say we’re dealing with apples and oranges in the video space.
Too bad Jim Long is in France and can’t weigh in.
1) It should be “live video service to my cell phone.”
2) “The Robert Scoble Story” starring Philip Seymour Hoffman
3) Everybody wants to predict the future.
4) You are doing it wrong.
5) You wanna predict something, predict when TC will post about something we’ve never heard of.
EH: I predict that TC will post five such things in just the next month. By the way, what browser are you using? I’ve tested on Safari, FF 3, IE and they all look OK.
@Bhaskar,
I’ve like what you guys are doing, but mobile broadcasting is so early. Quality is so poor still I have trouble watching more than a few seconds..
Kick those carriers to improve the connectivity in the US!
Bring on competition. It is good for everyone, developers and users. This debate is healthy too and very much appreciated.
@Andrew - Just to clarify, Kyte Mobile Producer, which is our live streaming and “one-click upload” mobile app, is currently in private beta for the Nokia N95. Anyone can sign up here: http://www.kyte.com/beta. The app will be available to the general public next month. I believe what you recently tried is our J2ME mobile app, which does not support live video streaming. Hope this helps to clarify.
Also, if interested in learning more about the complete Kyte platform, check out this video demo: http://www.kyte.com/demo.
Thanks,
Gannon
I think part of which streaming service you choose may depend on your audience. I always figured Kyte’s attraction from muscians was the integration to MySpace and potentially Facebook. MySpace is a no brainer for music; however, maybe for a more serious audience or even b2b, steaming from Qik to Mogulus, YouTube, etc., would be a better choice..
As far as the *technical* aspects I havent used either service long enough to know what’s better but seems like those obstacles are easier to fix versus the developed partners?
None of these services is breaking even 200K uniques. Does it really matter who beats who when their uptake is a failure?