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.
Pretty impressive. I never thought Justin.tv would take off, but I like the look and feel of the site, and there is certainly plenty to look at. Glad to see it doing so well.
@Ian Bell: It’s doing well in Middle East and Africa.
Justin.TV is the #1 network! ustream has always sucked and those other networks are just worthless.
What about..
Ustream.tv Just Got a Redesign, But Justin.tv Is Still Beating Its Pants Off “In Morocco, Egypt and Chile…”
It is US based traffic that counts, period. The number of non-US based traffic’d consumer internet sites that have exited in the past two years is very small.
Compete shows the best picture in the US race:
http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....?metric=uv
Justin is taking the illegal content strategy for growth. This worked for Youtube, but there are some MAJOR differences in this case. First, it is one thing to have a funny illegal clip of a SNL spoof. That is a tremendous asset. Having a illegal live broadcast that provides no on going value over time has little value. Additionally, most of Youtube’s initial growth traffic was in the US.
Ultimately I believe Justin’s strategy of infringement will not be rewarded with a exit.
Ustream it seems to be is taking a more rationale approach and trying to build a real business with monetizable content, thus giving them recorded video assets with real value over time.
I believe there will be only one exit in this space, and it won’t be Justin.tv and definitely not a infringing content strategy with NON-US traffic. The world has changed from 2 years ago in this area.
If I had to bet today, I think Ustream is the obvious choice.
Ustream is so dull.
Justin.tv FTW!
An opportunity for Google?
You can say hello to a new European actor on this live maket.
http://www.myshowroom.tv just opened and key differences have been developed to get something different.
You can ask for invitations as this is still in private beta.
300,000 unique visitors a day
AND
1,900,000 uniqe visitors a month… for justin.tv
uh…
huh? so all things aside… what’s up with MATH dear Erick??
^.^
tip for each of the sites…
share your ad revenues with the live streamers. you may get people migrating to your service from others.
I think you hit the nail on the head in relation to Birds in little clothing making other sites more ‘fun’ - but there are alot of us 30 somethings + that are interested in Business related live streams and stuff that doesn’t revolve purely around ‘youth’.
I think the figures are down on ustream partly because most 30+ people are just getting to grips with youtube - I see live streaming the next stage up from youtube - so their gadget that transfers ustream videos to youtube - is one of their big plus points - two channel for the price of one - and both are free - bargain!
BlogTV is a good channel too - if you type “live streaming” into google camstreams.com is the top entry - where are blogtv and ustream ?!! - they are the two main sites I would have expecting to see on such a search - maybe some SEO and how to video’s need to be made - to make people aware they exist ?.
Ustream has a business like feel about it - if the work from home Internet marketer’s used it the numbers would shoot up - I wanna see them selling the latest ebook live - like Marlon Sanders does already !
Blogtv seems to be getting all the youtuber stars mirgating to it - I like blogtv as it has a range of age groups - shame it doesn’t have the transfer video to youtube gizmo that ustream has.
In short I think both blogtv and ustream are aiming at slightly more niche audiences - both aiming at a different slice of the pie - skickham and justin.tv just make me feel old & I’m not into chicks exposing flesh
- youtube is getting a lot of views but not generating the vast amount of cash - boobs and cute animals get viewers but is not targeted enough.
Ustream and BlogTV might end up having more success than youtube once people catch on to it, as it’s the difference between e-mail and IM/twitter - e-mail being the ’snail mail’ of on-line communication these days.
What about livevideo.com, the only one that offers live video responses?
http://www.sparksocialmedia.com
I know its not totally fair as they added live later, but checkout:
http://trends.google.com/websi.....amp;sort=0
Okay! Here’s the deal. I am not sure how many of you really understand the real reason behind the stats increase for justin.tv.
There were many channels that were hosted to show the game of cricket (Kitply and Asia Cup) on justin.tv. And given the Indian, pakistani, sri lankan population in the united states. The number of users just shot up like crazy. I would like to see if the stats remain the same over the next few months as well. Then I would agree that justin beat ustream.
Hi webmaster!
What I think people neglect to look at is how every platform is seeing jumps in their visitors. This is an exciting time for live video. I think there’s more room than for just one.