Archive for February 9th, 2008

Yahoo! Live and Ustream.TV


Via TechCrunch, if the rumours coming in are true it would seem that Microsoft is not content to focus on its $50 Billion quest for Yahoo! alone. Reports suggest that they’re now looking to purchase life streaming application Ustream.tv as well:

“Ustream.tv is said to be in advanced talks with Microsoft to be acquired for $50 million, according to a report from Valleywag. Given it’s very early morning as the post goes live we are unable to put calls in to confirm the deal, but might have more later.”

The reports are listed as rumours currently; and for Microsoft’s sake I hope they prove to be untrue.

Were Microsoft not looking to gobble up Yahoo! I’d say it was a worthwhile acquisition to make, but in light of Yahoo!’s launch of Yahoo! Live last night - with all its warts and network traffic issues - purchasing Ustream.tv just doesn’t make any sense.

Yahoo! Live and Ustream.tv are duplicate technologies that fall into the emerging lifestreaming category, in which users with a decent web connection and web camera can create their own video channel for broadcasting whatever content suits their fancy.

Channels currently in existence range from political webcasts, to tech discussions, to music performances, to vlogging, and everything in between.

I’ve experimented with Ustream.tv to a extensive degree and am quite impressed with the application. Ustream supports embedded instances of the video and chat tools; has a small-scale social network built around it complete with profiles, tagging, commenting, and searching; and importantly supports playback of prerecorded content. Video clips can be recorded while broadcasting live or even pre-recorded privately before being publicly released.

Ustream has already had some major successes and has been used by the UN at the recent Climate Change conference, and by both Democrat and Republican candidates during the primary races. So it’s got some major runs on the board which make it an obvious contender for acquisition.

What makes these rumours truly odd is that Yahoo! has just gone live with their own lifestreaming offering. Having only just been launched, I have only minor experience with it; and unfortunately the test run I did start didn’t end well, with the application buckling under the load.

TechCrunch discussed this recently in “Yahoo Live Fails to Scale“:

“The idea of Yahoo getting into live streaming isn’t a bad one. The space is a logical vertical for the big players to be in, and there’s been rumors for some time that Google might soon offer a similar service on YouTube. The implementation isn’t rocket science; live video needs bandwidth and solid servers, something the little players are already doing. Yahoo Live isn’t a bad effort, but it lacks some of the obvious value adds of competitors such as the ability to record shows, so in theory it should take less to run…and yet it came crashing down miserably”

The system requirements to run this sort of service are vast, so in some ways it’s not surprising that the launch experienced some difficulties. Yahoo! isn’t exactly a small player on the Internet these days and rumours about Yahoo! Live have been ripe for weeks now. Despite the fact no major announcement was made it’s not the least bit surprising that its existence became widely known very quickly.

On the other hand surely they would have expected and planned for all tech-lovers to try their hand at the release - given it’s wow factor and the fact it’s the current en vogue innovation.

Some have commented on the surprising absence of a recording option. I find this a bit unusual myself. At the same time the fact life streaming has hit the radar so quickly could have caught Yahoo! offguard and this launch was pushed out the door quickly in the hopes they could join the front runners, with the intention of expanding the tool suite over time.

Unfortunately network and server load isn’t something that should be addressed later on down the line. Especially not when you’re Yahoo!. Adequate capacity is a must have, not a nice to have.

I’ll be taking a closer look at the app when I can gain access and will post my evaluation when I’ve got some more information.

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Saturday, February 9th, 2008

Internet, web communication 1 Comment