Live video on the Web is starting to take off, judging by the massive jump in traffic that Justin.tv is witnessing. According to comScore, the live video site’s global audience saw a massive jump from 9.3 million unique visitors in January to 15 million in February, which is about the same number of people who went to Veoh and nearly twice as many as visited Hulu.com. Of course, Hulu is only available in the U.S., where it is fourth most popular video site, and its videos are watched on other sites as well. In the U.S., ComScore only shows Justin.tv attracting 1.4 million people in February. So most of its audience and growth is global, with particular strength in Spain, Brazil, Germany, and the UK.
Quantcast, which directly measures all three sites, shows a similar trend. Globally, Justin.tv has 22.1 million monthly uniques, compared to 15.8 million for Hulu, and 11.9 million for Veoh. While the U.S. numbers are 3.9 million for Justin.tv, 14 million for Hulu, and 4 million for Veoh. (Ustream.tv seems to be the second-largest live video streaming site with 6.7 million global monthly visitors and 1.4 million in the U.S.). These are all site numbers, Quantcast also measures “network” numbers which presumably includes videos embedded elsewhere, and those are about double the site stats for each service. Justin.tv itself claims 1,800 percent year-over-year growth in unique visitors based on its internal Google Analytics numbers.
What all of these number show is that live video is beginning to make its mark, and could soon challenge the top video sites for the attention of audiences. There are 428,000 channels broadcasting live video on Justin.tv. Of those, 40,000 channels broadcast 1.75 million hours of video each day. And the level of engagement seems to be just as high as on regular video sites. ComScore’s VideoMetrix estimates that the average Justin.tv viewer in ethe US. watches just over an hour a month (64.7 minutes), almost exactly the same as a Veoh viewer (64.5 minutes), but still well below a Hulu viewer (87.2 minutes).
So why is Justin.tv so popular overseas? Could it be all the live sports events streamed over the service? Soccer and female wrestling seem to be particulraly popular.
Justin is just begging for press. Everyone knows they promote porn and illegal content and thats where all their traffic comes from. I used to broadcast there but left after one week. Its too shady.
Justin.tv will deadpool within 6 months.
They will not be able to stick around if they continue down this road of illegal content and non US visitors. They have created a bad brand and no way to generate revenue.
Adam – you are just a hater. No one could have predicted Justin.tv’s growth two years ago. People have been counting this company out forever. The only problem is – it keeps on doing better and better.
Dude, are you a lawyer? Do you know what the DMCA is? Have you read it? Pretty clearly ‘No’ on all three.
TC commenters are usually well informed. Sorry to say, but you’re an exception.
Nobody will buy Justin.tv – they can’t. It doesn’t have anything thats defensible and its all illegal content. If someone bought it they would have to delete all the illegal content and that would reduce Justin.tv to about 2 live shows at any given time and NO traffic.
Farewell Justin.tv.
The biggest live streaming network online – that sounds pretty defensible to me.
Yeah I think quite a few people said that about YouTube.
“Nobody wull buy Justin.tv – they can’t” – Is it me or did I just have a Déjà vu?
Hundreds of years ago (in internet years of course) in a kingdom called Silicon Valley there was a princess named YouTube that people said will never, ever find her prince, because she was too ugly and some even went as far as saying that only a “moron” will marry her, but as fate would have it, she not only got married, she also got a wedding ring worth $1.65B…
The moral: You can be ugly and all, but still get “laid”…
Stan
“and non US visitors.”
Are you suggesting it’s a bad thing to have global traffic? :/
i think he’s suggesting that most of the revenue comes from us visitors (i think)..
infringing content present a huge legal liability in the face of the YouTube/Viacom lawsuit.
Nobody in their right mind would use Justin.tv for their show or business. Their brand SUCKS. A suicide, porn, illegal content…
LOL Mike – clearly you are a Ustream plant – what is your real name? Johnny Ham????
Why don’t you go back to your tiny site and try to get more viewers instead of trolling on TC…?
Ustream = Lame
Justin.tv ROCKS
Be careful/Headsup…when I worked at Mogulus, we got a kick out of pitting Justin against Ustream….seems like it’s working!
Sorry, had to say
Hmm…sure is interesting that ustream guys have nothing better to do than troll techcrunch. Must be lots of free time over there, with no traffic to manage!
justin articles/press are always controversial and trashy. sounds like justin trying to stir up trouble and reaching for excuses….reaching and sound real desparate….
From experience I can say that Justin.tv is by far the cleanest among it’s competitors. I had to make my daughter close her account on ustream when I saw the attention she was getting there. It was all pedophiles. Justin.tv has moderation tools that actually work.
Justin took porn $ … Did you see this?
http://www.tech...ries-into-cash/
Get your facts straight
Suicide on justin…sounds like people just watched as it happened which is really, really sad
http://news.cne...e-on-justin-tv/
Suicides are so sad
Stan Kowalski:
this must be a new brand of bizarro-sarcasm… what did you just say?
OMG! check this out
http://www.yout...h?v=Hr5pzUrGv-k
Mike – look at Youtube.
It is size and audience that matters the most.
Give Justin.tv 3 months and it will be the second largest video site online – second only to Youtube.
Their size doesnt matter – its not the right audience. Its a bunch of korean fools who A) DON’T make Justin.tv money B) Are NOT going to watch your lame weekly show on whatever boring thing it is you do and C) They are NOT going to create their own content and give back to the site.
Educate yourself before you talk.
Korean Fools?
What are you an idiot and a racist?
- M
Do you have definite statistics on all those points, or are you just blindly guessing?
Their geo breakdown looks pretty monetizable, http://www.quan...v/geo/countries
So I don’t know where you get “Korean” from…
From their geo breaks down, my list of monetizable country is:
US (16%)
Germany (6.9%)
UK(6.8%)
France(4.8%)
Canada(3.1%)
Netherland(1.5%)
IMO, 39.1% of their uniques will make money while 61.9% will lose money for them. I would love to see them figure something out to make money off of video in such lower GDP per capita countries.
Couldn’t disagree more. Outstanding growth, amazing potential. Nice work justin.tv!
Caught red handed taking porn $$$!!!!!!!
http://www.yout...h?v=Hr5pzUrGv-k
Can’t believe the video!!
“everyone knows they promote…” spoken like a Ustream rep that prowls the internet in an attempt to bash the (more successful) competition. You only hear about the incidents that matter, the incidents on the sites that are making it. The porn on Ustream is handled in a similar manner as on Justin.TV, just no one cares to report it, since Ustream is so so small. Justin.TV has been the pioneer in the field of live broadcasting. They were the first, and have paved the way for others to follow, tackling the problems first, before anyone had a chance to stop it. The unfortunate side of your argument is that Justin.TV has applications and a user base to prevent abuse of live broadcasting. Unfortunate that a few degenerates have chosen to use Justin.TV to exploit a great service. What about the other 22 million people who use the nice, clean site for legitimate purposes?
Hulu.com will definitely climb to the top spot if they allow their content to be streamed to non-US viewers. Probably the viewership will be much higher than YouTube.
OMG, Just saw this – caught red handed taking porn $
http://www.yout...h?v=Hr5pzUrGv-k
where do u think i watch football (soccer for you lamearses), homo?
I love Justin.tv – best quality live video available and easiest place to broadcast. I think it’s clear why they’ve grown so fast so quickly- Congrats guys!
Definitely lots of illegal content that is driving their traffic.
I would almost guarantee their Feb numbers were due to broadcasts of Euro league soccer games. Several people at my work were watching the games all lunch time. Multiply that across the globe and soccer has the draw to push those numbers up drastically
Just because you use it for illegal purposes, doesnt mean others do. Please leave personal confessions at the door, and lets not assume that EVERYONE is a pirate. You may be, turn yourself in to the local police station.
Seriously, I use it for all clean uses. Just because you use it for illegal purposes doesnt mean I do!
Veoh actually TURNED OFF a lot of it’s overseas traffic.
http://www.busi...nal-freeloaders
by blocking us out, i think it sucks like hell – just imagining -
It is amazing how big Justin.tv has got in such a short time.
This start-up is set for gold
Problem with Justin.tv is that the majority of the content on their site is stolen. They’re allowing people to stream other people’s TV channels, movies etc on their network. Hulu’s content is licensed and they have the right to stream it.
Justin.tv is a legal nightmare waiting to happen.
@Daves Agree.
Alot of these illegal streams are the MAIN revenue source for companies like English Premiere League, Live NBA games, etc.
This is different than Youtube because old Saturday Night Live clips are not NBC’s main source of revenue. They obviously aren’t as concerned.
I hope they have good lawyers (and deep pockets)
“They allow others…” Isn’t the whole model based on others flagging content? Should a team of 5 guys go around and decide what is appropriate or not? Probably not. So… either the entire world is amoral and allowing piracy to go on, or your blanket statements that their main draw is illegal content is false. I hope the latter is true. Plus, if a kid can kill himself on their site, and they have no legal obligation, I doubt someone leaving a TV on opens them to legal litigation.
im one of the JTV illegal broadcasters and its my view that illegal content will likely become flagged by copyright owners ( witch has already happened) forcing JTV to remove the offending content..
But the quality of the content is not DVD or even VHS yet, mostly due to laggy servers and dropped connections as well as missing minutes from a broadcast.
To sum up the service needs improvements before it will be a real threat to say your local cable service.
As for porn, very little of that there, the current user base keep a close eye out and report promptly ..
The quality of the video service is what keeps it out of trouble, would you pay for a movie broadcast on JTV… NOT..
It really should be considered more of preview service that saves you the viewer money, how many videos have you paid for/bought and afterwards considered it a waste ?, and had you seen it first on JTV decided not to buy/rent it !
Isn’t Hulu blocked in most other countries? I know it is in China and Mexico — that sort of gives every other website a little bit of an advantage?
Yeah Hulu is blocked outside the US because of content rights. It’s still kind of a legit comparison Justin.tv global traffic to Hulu global traffic though, because you could argue that Hulu only shows US-centric content and in English only (although English speaking countries like Canada/Australia could add a lot).
Yeah. It’s a completely unfair (and pretty stupid) comparison. It’s like saying BBC’s iPlayer figures are low overseas.
Congratulations to Justin.tv for strengthening their position as the leader in live video! The growth is well deserved.
@Robert Clark – Justin.tv operates under the same laws and principles as YouTube, Hulu and such. To say that they promote and encourage such content is a joke. The pure fact of the matter is, Justin.tv is huge and has A LOT of members. If Justin.tv wasn’t around, the same thing would be happening at these other sites that get less traffic.
As far as Justin.tv vs Hulu vs Veoh vs Ustream, I’d have to say Justin.tv is by far the best service. Some might argue that Justin.tv has a lot of issues at times. Well, Justin.tv is doing DAMN good considering the millions of users that are constantly coming to Justin.tv daily, so naturally there are going to be hiccups when having to constantly scale their service up.
To put it simply, Justin.tv provides the best service out there with the best scalability and features.
At first these numbers seem surprising until taking the time to compare Hulu and Justin.TV side by side. The bottom line is that I can find more intriguing content on Justin.TV and I don’t have to wait for new episodes to be uploaded. I just log into Justin.TV and my favorite characters are waiting with fresh entertainment.
The only thing more entertaining than watching streams of Justin.TV is watching the creators of Justin.TV in person.
Wow, that is definitely impressive performance for Justin.tv. Keep up the great work guys!
I got put onto Justin.tv by a friend and have been addicted for months now. I’ve checked out stickam and ustream – their content is just lame – Justin.tv is the one I keep coming back to.
I disagree with Robert.
JTV is a huge site but they have a great team of both paid and volunteer people working behind the scenes to remove porn and other harmful material quickly.
I’ve seen other sites take days to remove porn or never remove it.
I love JTV because you’re just not another face in the crowd, you are part of a community where people actually care and watch each others backs.
Considering Hulu is actively blocking Non-US traffic not to piss off the international tv-stations that syndicate their content – and Justin.tv is full of illegal material, I am not surprised.
Hey TC morons, Hulu is blocked overseas…
interesting, Robert C, are you using the site to broad cast your own porn or just to watch others? you’re right, you do sound a bit shady.
keep up the good job justin guys, live video is really taking off and you’re on top of the game.
I know the team and they’re a very smart group of developers who work hard – and clearly their work is paying off
Good luck in 2009!
Nice work guys!
You can’t watch football (real football, not american football) on Hulu–that’s why I use JTV. I also love watching those adorable Jonas Brothers perform live!
Seem to me that the numbers are fake and are jacked up by spam services like Zango.
You have evidence of this I suppose? Or do you just work for ustream?
Congrats to the Justin.tv team. Keep up the impressive growth.
That’s because hulu is only available in the US……….
…also most of the positive comments in this post seem to be coming from JTV.
…and the negative ones seem to be coming from ustream. Par for the course!
…cleary a justin employee….why the call out on Ustream? Feels like an inferiority complex based on being defensive…ouch!
My thoughts on Justin.TV.
I’ve long told them and whispered to others that Justin.TV isn’t a part or “poster-child” of the Bay Area Valley Bubble. Therfore, TechCrunch commenters look at them and say, “does not computer! A site can’t be popular without going through the bay area bubble!”
In actuality, this site did start on TC, GigaOm and other sites then skyrocketed where Justin was on Freaking MTV within the first 45 days of broadcasting. MySpace isn’t “cool” in San Francisco but it’s still a very hot website and still has a lot of life to give.
Justin.TV has gone mainstream and that’s the reality. As hard as you guys try to “call it” when you think a site is going to be super popular, you often times don’t call it in time or you call it incorrectly and the cool sites like Pownce, Jaiku, Skype or FriendFeed don’t make it to the mainstream or take FOREVER to do it whereas you’ve already dismissed Justin.TV back in 2007 and never looked back.
While you were all drooling over Ustream, Justin.TV was making big leaps, growing their marketing, hiring new employees and getting their game faces on in an effort to have the best quality video and the most popular site.
Just because JTV doesn’t have a show with Loren Feldman or Gary Vee, doesn’t mean they can’t get the traffic needed to either raise more money, make money or exit with a big payoff.
I don’t give a crap about how much illegal content is on their site just as long if they receive a DMCA notice, they take the content down in a timely fashion. That’s all that’s important but if they’re selling the ads and reaching the numbers they want to reach and their site is stable, then good for them.
Let’s give them some kudos, realize that they’ve gone mainstream, embrace them and STFU because the darling startup isn’t always the startup that makes a boat load of money.
Good work JTV.
-Adam Jackson
http://justin.tv/adamsblock
The finest management team in the Bay! Go Justin.tv.
I am amazed so many are surprised with the success of Justin.tv. Sure, when j.tv first arrived, it was ahead of what anyone thought could happen on the Internet. But these guys are building the future of Internet/TV entertainment. I’ll just say, they are now just entering what is the beginnig of the steep slope of the “S” curve. Big things, big things…
Justin.tv is doing an awesome job and letting tonnes of people share things live that you just can’t elsewhere. Sure there’s always going to be trash content on any free broadcasting medium (YouTube anyone?) but that doesn’t mean the service doesn’t do a great job for millions of other people
I don’t know why everyone’s getting so het up. Being able to see dance competitions live on the web has been awesome for us and is certainly not something we could have done on YouTube. Well done Justin & Co!
JustinTV is where you go to watch free sports — soccer, NBA, MMA etc.. That explains the huge overseas traffic.
I watched two girls go down on each other last night also on JTV..
me too! ha! it was awesome….
This just shows the awesome potential for live video. JTV serves as a platform for almost anything and builds a real community. Congrats on the great!
I dont understand the point of this post. If Hulu is blocked outside of the US then by default Justin.tv is bigger than Hulu overseas.
I use Justin.TV and I love it but question how they are allowed to have certain feeds available. You can watch out of market sports games, Seinfeld reruns and all types of movies. If Justin.tv becomes a bigger player all that “shady” stuff has to stop because nobody will take them serious.
Justin.tv = Friendster.
International traffic is not monetizable and illegal live content is not sustainable.
“International traffic is not monetizable”
WHAT???
Most of the world does not have disposable income to spend on advertised products. Do you have any idea what the ad rates are in Spain (7% of unique), Brazil(7% of unique), Turkey(6.3% of unique), Mexico(3.5% of Unique), Argentina(2.83% of unique)? I’ll give you a hint, it’s less then the cost of bandwidth and hosting.
Those costs could be greatly reduced and those economies could start booming. Then JTV would be declared geniuses. I just can’t figure out how they will make enough money to cover their costs.
If they are complying with the law, what is the problem? I think there are far worse offenders who are “breaking” the law in many more visible ways. Why can’t people be happy that a startup is succeeding and not failing for once?
Justin.tv has the gaming community. Other streaming sites don’t have members broadcasting playing the latest video games, zelda marathons, etc like justin.tv does.
Are you serious? A gaming community? haha
Check it out: http://www.just...irectory/gaming
Not gaming, but porn. See/decide for yourself, watch the youtube video!
http://www.yout...h?v=Hr5pzUrGv-k
Justin.tv gets its traffic from illegal live TVs like soccer matches. That’s why they are very big overseas. Do you think it will continue that way?
They created really bad prestige and it wouldn’t be possible to start over.
It’s just not fair…
DEADPOOL!
You can’t really hate on justin.tv. I mean female wrestling?? C’mon! don’t act like you don’t like it! As long as they don’t broadcast someone’s head being chopped off or someone getting raped, I’m all cool with it. what do you think?
The napster of live streaming..I love them for letting me watch a dvd rip of Watchmen(2009) but you couldn’t pay me to take their stock out of fear that somehow I might be liable when the day of reckoning comes.
the place to watch all the ufc ppv, hbo ppv boxing
go justin.tv
Don’t hate on JTV! I love Free HBO!!!
i don’t think that’s a fair comparison since Hulu is blocked outside of the US…I know quite a few French persons would love access to its content, so if it was not blocked, the results would be really different
MOGULUS IS THE BEST!!! PLEASE TRY IT!!!
They think we all are very odd. No wonder.
Either I’ve missed something or this is a very stupid comparison. Hulu isn’t available outside the US.
Awesome news guys. You can’t argue the incredible metrics.
Justin.TV is the pioneer in live broadcasting on the internet. They were there first. Any trials encoutnered along the way simply paved the way for others to follow on their coat tails. Sure, there may have been some down sides, and sure, there may have been less-than-reputable users on Justin.TV, but when there are 22 million people visiting and using the site, that is bound to happen. My space was chastised for allowing pedophiles to roam the internet seeking victims, yet social networks like thefacebook rose from the ashes. Justin.TV has a fan base, strong user foundation, and applications that keep the site safe, yet effective. With constant revisions and updates, Justin.TV is just getting better. Porn goes on at every site; you only hear about the incidents that matter, because the site matters. Haters should stop hating on Justin.TV, and realize what a trailblazer the site truly is!
No, Stickam was the first. Ustream was the 2nd to launch.
Re the title, is techcrunch a US-only website? Seems odd to restrict yourselves to the US when there’s so much interesting activity “overseas”…
here’s what i believe: the internet is the new tv. tv is the new film. films are the new events. and gaming falls somewhere in between all that. hulu, youtube, justin.tv are ALL on the right track. remember when there were only 3 things to watch on tv? and home grown “shows/projects” like http://www.iget...iltproject.html are the total way of the future. we only get what the networks think we want. and hulu and justin have a LOT of networky stuff. as we weave social marketing INTO our own ‘tv’ we will see more interesting things to watch. meanwhile, YAY on all programming on the internet!
JTV is a great community and is fun to be at on my spare time.
justin tv OWNS all yea
I am a big fan of JTV. Even though there are some channels with illegal content there is also many good legal channels to watch like lifecasting or gaming.