YouTube will launch live-streaming in the style of startups UStream, Justin.TV, Stickam, BlogTV and Mogulus at its November 22 “YouTube Live!” event, a company source who has seen mock ups of the user-interface tells us.
“Of course something could go wrong and they might not launch it,” say our source, who nevertheless says YouTube employees talk of the new service’s launch as a foregone conclusion.
A YouTube spokesperson told us: “We’re working with a third party to live-stream our event called Live. We have no product to announce at this time.”
Live streaming is very expensive and hard to monetize. A Google source told us in August that YouTube execs figure that if just 10% of YouTube’s users adopted live streaming, bandwidth costs would go up 20% to 25%.
That’s because live-streaming clips tend to last much longer than the short video clips typical of YouTube. They also require data to pass both ways.
It’s also hard to make money off live-streaming. Advertisers don’t want to put their brands against live content created by uncontrollable YouTube users.
One possibility that we feel Google shareholders should root for: YouTube will launch live streaming as a service for paying customers only.
Published June 26, 2011
Category: Devices, Mobile, Technology, Web
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