Who is winning the race to become the top site for live Web video? A quick check on Google Trends for Websites and comScore suggests that over the past four months Justin.tv is pulling ahead of the pack. According to Google Trends, Justin.tv is attracting more than 300,000 unique visitors a day, compared to only about 60,000 for both Stickam.com and Ustream.tv. Comscore measures visitors on a monthly basis, but shows a similar relative breakdown, with Justin.tv pulling in 1.9 million monthly uniques worldwide versus 860,000 for Stickam, 790,000 for Ustream.tv, and 440,000 for Mogulus. (See chart below).
Both of these measure only the traffic to the main Websites of each competing live Web video service, and do not include how many people watch the videos in embeddable players elsewhere on the Web. But they are apples-to-apples and should give a good indication of the overall trend.
Ustream.tv, at least, realizes it needs to change something in order to catch up. Today it launched a redesign of its site, which gives DIY broadcasters the ability to add text and graphic overlays to their videos and better metrics on how many people are watching their videos. Also, viewers can now subscribe to specific broadcasters. The company claims 10 million unique viewers overall for the month of June, including videos watched offsite. It has 410,000 registered users. 100,000 of them are active and are broadcasting 10,000 to 15,000 live events a day Some of its better known users include Johnny Knoxville, Dane Cook, James Blunt, The Plain White Ts, and both Presidential campaigns. Steve Gillmor, the editor of TechCrunchIT, uses it as well for his NewsGang Live show.
But that right there might just be the problem. Would you rather watch Steve Gillmor talking with his wife about Twitter on a split screen while her cat climbs the couch in the background (this is actually on right now), or French cowgirls in bikinis on Justin.tv? No offense, Steve, but the featured live streams on Justin.tv just seem younger and more fun than the stuff on Ustream.tv.
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hey eric….
just how did you get the users on the graph of the google trends!!!!!! i’ve never been able to figure this out, as whenever i look at the trends graph, the left side is completely empty…
thanks
if youtube ever offer this feature both are dead
You forgot about BlogTV!
Sam, you have to be logged in with your Google ID.
Hazz, how many lines do want on that graph? Google Trends shows BlogTV at about the same level as Mogulus. Comscore shows it doing slightly better with 1.05 million monthly uniques worldwide.
no Yahoo! Live stat? I am curious about that.
Do you actually watch the channels on Justin.tv that have the most viewers? Seems to me like mostly *pirated* sports events from overseas that gain the most viewers on J.tv. Aside from that they got a couple of *Lifecaster* types who sit in front of their computers all day and talk to IRC channels.
At least on UStream, there are shows with actual topics, and in my experience, it seems like UStream does a better job of hosting events and covering conferences, etc. As an early streamer on both platforms, I prefer UStream over J.tv any day of the week.
Sure the numbers are the numbers, but I’m placing my bets on the UStream platform. I actually just signed up for my developer API key and am considering using UStream as the delivery platform for a new project.
Maybe we should use a better site, like Compete.com.
http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....?metric=uv
Hmmm……….
Erick, I thought comscore could show the traffic on embedded players.
Ustream feels more grown-up and newsy. Justin.tv is for the kids, which is great, but I think they’ll both niche out with much different audiences. The oldies (25+) are still figuring out lifecasting and brandcasting as social media tools. We plan to do Ustream as soon as we get the nerve.
eric.
thanks.
i was considering google to be able to get stats on traffic for a number of sites (~300K–500K) for a project i’m considering. compete/alexa won’t work given their restrictions… i actually blew up a domain service by accident when my app blew thru their allocation from alexa/compete!!
this is when it would be nice to be back in the education/college environment!
a good/cheap service with this kind of data would be a godsend… but talk about a serious data-mining biz…
thanks
I’m a little biased as an investor in UStream, but your traffic #s are off. Ustream is Quantified so check out their real monthly uniques of ~7 million.
This redesign fucking sucks for me as it crashes all my browsers due to the new player. If ustream downgrades their player then I can be active on it.
Ramit, your bias is skewing your stats. From quantcast (the link you provided), Ustream uniques is 1,071,663.
Justin.tv has virtually no legitimate traffic. They’ve turned into an Illegal ESPN Live. They’re going to get sued into oblivion at some point. It’s sad they got so desperate because they seemed fairly promising at first.
“Ustream.tv Just Got a Redesign, and is Beating the Pants Off Justin.tv”
It would be just as easy to write the above headline as the current headline on the story.
Using these web traffic numbers is always a dangerous game. As Ramit points out, Ustream is Quantified, which means that its numbers on Quantcast are the actuals, rather than estimates.
The reason that Comscore, etc., always undercount Ustream is that as a platform, the vast majority of its viewership occurs via embeds, rather than the main Web site.
If we do an apples to apples comparison of JTV and Ustream’s numbers (say monthly visits), Quantcast says that Ustream receives over 2.5 million visits/month, while JTV gets a little over 700K. By that measure, Ustream is nearly 4X JTV’s size.
http://www.quantcast.com/ustream.tv/traffic
http://www.quantcast.com/justin.tv/traffic
Bob previously pointed out that according to Compete, Ustream is twice JTV’s size:
http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....?metric=uv
Unfortunately, since JTV is not Quantified, it’s not an exact comparison. Either way, it’s relatively easy to either say that JTV dominates (according to Google Trends and Comscore) or that Ustream dominates (according to Quantcast and Compete).
As a (full disclosure) investor and shareholder in Ustream, I know I feel like the current headline is unfair, and that the story should be updated to note the strongly contradictory data.
Note: Ramit’s numbers are based on the numbers for the Ustream Network:
http://www.quantcast.com/p-22sNmkTMKNC-A
I’m not really sure how the Network stats work, but according to these, Ustream gets 7 million unique people, 8.5 million unique cookies, 17 million visits, and 43 million pageviews per month.
Of those 43 million pageviews, 9 million come from the Ustream.tv web site, and 34 million from various syndicators.
@15 you said it. It’s only a matter of time before it catches up with them. I’m surprised it’s gone on this long though.
Erick,
Your post shows your ignorance in this space. Justin’s traffic is 80% from Arabic and Spanish speaking countries (check the sources and dig into the details).
That is HORRIBLE traffic that isn’t monetizable. Their content is entirely illegal sports matches.
Ustream kills Justin in US traffic.
Chris, Quantcast network stats includes unique visitors from embedded widgets. Erick’s stats are based on unique visitors to their websites. I was just trying to compare apples to apples.
It’s not fair to say Ustream has 7million unique visitors(including embeds visitors) compared to Justin.tv 1.9 million unique visitors(only counting justin.tv’s website visitors)
Ustream redesign looks much better to me. Anyone can start a pirating business like Justin. Ustream is actually trying to build a real business.
Erick, are you on JTV payroll?
Justin.TV has the most original feel. The site design isn’t perfect, but has a very unique character, almost representative of dirty and disorganized dorm room, where most of the filming occurs anyway… The other competitive sites should read this to gets some ideas for innovating and how to better compete… http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2
How is Justin’s content monetizable? Do they actually have anything besides illegal content?
Right now I’m looking at a illegal Arabic soccer match and a Bird Feeder on their homepage?
LiveVideo.com should be on this list too. I just checked it with Google Trends, and it seems to several times the direct traffic of the other live video sites - not counting the huge spike for Justin.tv which was only for the past month.
We actually do our live video show (Dating, Love, & Sex Advice) on LiveVideo every weekday (11am Pacific), it’s a great audience.
Have an awesome day!
Dan & Jennifer
hmm, using google trends? I’m sure it has some accuracy to it, but to use it to make a beating the pants off statement might be a stretch. If you look at justin’s stats compared to ustream’s 10 million, then its the other way around.
UStream’s stronghold is the original and quality of content. Granted, women in bikinis are hotter than Steve Gilmor. I think it’s safe to say though, that uStream is building a company for the longhaul with the quantity over quality manner. It seems Justin is going for the teen market, which is similar to stickam. At the end of the day advertisers are going to be more inclined to associate themselves with good content and brand names instead of a guy walking around with a backpack + video cam in his hat. Just my two cents though, as there are going to be multiple winners in the field.
-jlb
For what it’s worth, Google Analytics reported that we had just over 5M absolute unique visitors on our website alone in June (up from 3M in May). 80M pageviews (not including syndicated content or embedded players).
Google trends actually seems to have the best correlation to real stats (when we compare our directly measured Google Analytics stats to directly measured stats from Quantcast).
Is the Kiko.com team still running Justin.tv?
That’s a great title for dyslexics.
Woops, I forgot to mention those stats are for Justin.tv. And Chris, yes, the Kiko founders make up half of the founding team of Justin.tv
JustinTV’s audience is arab TV channels.
Erick,
Take a look at US stats.. you know, the stats that actually matter to advertisers.
http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....;months=12
Totally different picture, don’t you think? Once you remove Arab and Egyptian audience, things look a LOT different, don’t they!
Dave
Lol you go justin tv
Those statistics from JTV, are those the sports channel for soccer, hockey, and pay per view tv channels that get 5000+ viewers? Or real broadcasters?
Jason,
The Quantcast comparisons were for the Ustream.tv web site, not the network, so they were apples to apples comparisons. The only network stats were here:
http://www.quantcast.com/p-22sNmkTMKNC-A
Dave - thanks a lot for the comment - it is great!
Erick,
You forgot some of the title from your post, full title here:
“Ustream.tv Just Got a Redesign, But Justin.tv Is Still Beating Its Pants Off In Illegal Content, Arabic Soccer Matches, and Girls Eating Cheetos.”
Wait, Steve Gillmore is in a bikini while his wife climbs the couch and his cat plays with French cowgirls?
I may not have read the article.
Kyle,
You should go ahead and Quantify Justin.tv. It’s free, and then all the information will be freely accessible to all.
If JTV is actually doing 80 million PV/month, that’s impressive. That’s the equivalent of Gizmodo + PopSugar (both of which are Quantified) and would probably make JTV one of the 200 biggest sites on the Web.
For a good laugh..
Check out Justin’s Google Trends Source Countries
http://www.google.com/trends?q=justin.tv
I did not realize we were monetizing in Morocco and Chile already!
does it really matter? anyone can create a live stream nowadays.
Am I the only one who misread the title, and thought it said ‘beating of in their pants’? Thats just me. Take it or leave it.
Justin.tv has always seemed like the more fun site to me, it also has a great design, chat features and technology, the video and sound always seemed better than ustream. However many of the more interesting people seemed to have left now, I guess because they got bored of the novelty of it. As pointed out a lot of their recent traffic has been from sports broadcasts.
Hi Erick, while I really enjoy reading your posts I think you have the wrong impression on Justin.tv. There’s some decent and good content on the site.
@Sarah Austin: Why the name change???
Justin.tv is as worthless as it always was. The moment they try to monetize, expect crazy DMCAs.
According to Quantcast, TechCrunch, which is Quantified, gets about 2 million visitors per month.
http://www.quantcast.com/techcrunch.com
@Dave Sarah Austin is my name. Sarah Meyers was a stage name.
@Yawn Justin.tv is not. They will make money if they can hold out and last.
@Chris Yeh thanks for the tip on quantcast.
@Sarah Austin I didn’t know about the name change! Glad to see you’re still making stuff happen.
@Sarah Austin: whoa… didn’t know that. In any case, I like your new name a lot better! Weird that you used Meyers… it’s hard to spell… Austin rocks!
Thanks guys.