Written by Jackson West
Posted Friday, June 22, 2007 at 2:00 AM PT

 

Five Free Services for Broadcasting Yourself Live

People have been broadcasting live video to the Internet for years now, first mainstreamed by Jennicam. Since then, it’s become primarily a vehicle for teleconferencing, group chat, weather stations and, of course, pornography. The Justin.tv team recently made a splash by breaking it out of the bedroom thanks to technology like EVDO cellular data networks.

While it’s exciting to think that now anyone can be a broadcast network, the reality is that without a lot of promotional moxie or a name-brand star, you’ll be lucky to get famous among fifteen people. Natalie Portman could certainly draw a crowd, but unfortunately for horny nerds everywhere, Valleywag’s report she would start lifecasting turned out to be a hoax.

But that won’t stop emo teens, new media mavens and entrepreneurs from trying! So here are five choices for broadcasting your life.

Mogulus: This one offers probably the best tools. It allows for mixing multiple video sources, collaboration between users on a single channel and built in graphics and effects. If you’re actually thinking about starting a live network on the cheap, and not just chatting with friends, this is where you want to be. (See our initial coverage.)

BlogTV: The company announced its new embeddable player at the Supernova conference in San Francisco this week, meaning that you can bring your show to your site. It’s also broadcasting discussions live from the conference. There are plenty of features to play with, but dropping by the site today I found it deadly slow.

Kyte.tv: This service has a strong area of mobile features so that you can “LifeStream” on the go or watch someone else’s show on your phone. Of course, there’s also an embeddable player to put on your blog and a new Facebook app. The most popular channel is Mashuptown which features music video mashups and reports on the scene.

Ustream.tv: This is where the geeks are hanging out, with Chris Pirillo hosting the most popular channel, followed by streams from Zooomr and Leo Laporte. Like the other offerings, there’s archiving and embeds as well.

Stickam: This site is based on communities, and besides letting you broadcast, also enables video chat. There’s even a section for featured entertainers. Here, the top viewed videos are generally from fit, young women in minimal clothing and the amount of tossled hair and garishly printed hoodies says “hipsters welcome.”

There’s plenty more to choose from, like the group-chat-focused Paltalk, all-business Veodia and the sociable Operator11. AT&T is going to support phone-to-phone video streams, creating even more possibilities. It’s nice to see this sudden burst of new development in the field, as I remember suggesting to my boss back in 1998 that we could be webcasting poetry slams with RealMedia at a blazing 56 kbps.

Follow us on Twitter or subscribe to the feed

Sphere
Topic: Online Video, Startups
« Previous Post Next Post »

Comments & Trackbacks

  1. Great round up of services. I’ve covered Mogulus, Ustream and BlogTV in my blog (www.pravdam.com), still trying to understand how one of them will be able to capture the market.

    Kfir Pravda on June 22nd, 2007 at 7:28 am - Permalink

  2. [...] NewTeeVee: Live video streams are going to be the next big thing. Pick you options. Five ways to broadcast yourself. [...]

    GigaOM What’s on GigaNET: A Warzone Startup, Broadcast UrSelf & WebOS « on June 22nd, 2007 at 7:53 am - Permalink

  3. Looks like same article that is over on http://www.techcrunch.com/ today ???? with very minor variation???

    favereader on June 22nd, 2007 at 10:12 am - Permalink

  4. yeah – that is true. though it seems like we published ours a little earlier.

    Om Malik on June 22nd, 2007 at 10:16 am - Permalink

  5. I was suprised at the similarity as well. It’s definitely a hot topic but the timing was weird.

    Liz Gannes on June 22nd, 2007 at 10:31 am - Permalink

  6. I just saw a story on NBC http://www.nbc-2.com/articles/…..eid=13133. It said that Stickam.com protects the interests of minors by built in safety features. I worked at Stickam and you should know that their professed concern for the safety of underage users is bogus. Right now a 14 year old user can chat outright with an adult and even worse go into a private room together where what happens can not be monitored. Stickam removed several of the features that keep underage users protected. This was done because increasing signups was a bigger priority than safety. There are repeated complaints made to the site about explicit content and behavior but they go unheeded. They fired a staff member because he was reporting predators and abuse. It is common to find minors flashing and posting explicit pictures. The so called “monitors” ban male users who remove their shirts and leave girls who are on cam in their underwear or worse. Their no tolerance policy for explicit content and concern for child safety is just so much lip service. There are even worse things going on at that company if you were to dig deeper and go behind the facade. Suffice to say I would never want any child of mine involved with it. MySpace is Sunday school compared to what goes on at Stickam and its affiliated companies.

    p.s how is it that a so called start up company can afford to operate from the tallest building on the west coast of the US (US bank tower) wouldn’t you like to know where the money comes from….hint its not venture capital. Parent company Advanced Video Communications is so much bigger than they would like you to believe and they DO NOT really build video conferencing systems for companies.

    Steven Rombo on June 22nd, 2007 at 11:13 am - Permalink

  7. [...] [fonte] The 5 servizi gratuiti per fare la propria TV by Luca Palli, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. [...]

    Video Monte Ceneri » 5 servizi gratuiti per fare la propria TV on June 23rd, 2007 at 1:49 pm - Permalink

  8. [...] the such, just recently tools have appeared to make it easy to broadcast live. Both Techcrunch and NewTeeVee highlight some of them while asking themselves “Who will be the YouTube of Live [...]

    Live TV: Where Traditional Broadcasters Will Live On on June 29th, 2007 at 2:49 am - Permalink

  9. [...] NewTeeVee Five Free Services for Broadcasting Yourself Live « – Here’s a roundup of the up and coming live streaming services out there. This may be a good source to consider adding to a Lifestream if they allow saving of clips and providing rss feeds of them. [...]

    My Web Travels for July 14th 2007 through July 27th 2007 | krynsky.com on July 27th, 2007 at 5:37 pm - Permalink

  10. [...] a comedic video -Make your own video podcast (essentially your own ron paul tvshow) -Have your own Live Show -Make video responses to popular videos -A Ron Paul Video [...]

    Promoting Ron Paul 101 « Unofficial Ron Paul Info on August 31st, 2007 at 5:13 pm - Permalink

  11. [...] a comedic video -Make your own video podcast (essentially your own ron paul tvshow) -Have your own Live Show -Make video responses to popular videos -A Ron Paul Video [...]

    Promoting Ron Paul 101 « RonPaulInfo.Wordpress.com on September 2nd, 2007 at 8:52 pm - Permalink

  12. Watch the hottest adult stars at home. You never know what may happen behind closed doors.

    Adult Stars At Home on January 3rd, 2009 at 11:25 am - Permalink

  13. Funny game adult can give you really good new options, and can experiment more pleasure together too. Do not be so shy and try using this options we’re offering you right now. Just imagine, your boyfriend or girlfriend having sex. That’ll be an unforgettable experience and you will never regret.

    Adult Pc Games on April 3rd, 2009 at 3:54 pm - Permalink

  14. Funny game adult is a option that you can use if you are looking for something new in your intimate life. Remember that many couples do not enjoy playing with sexual toys, and maybe depending on the sexual toy they use, someone might get hurt. If you do not have idea how to use the toy, it is possible that you can have problems or damage and the idea is to enjoy more and learn everyone together.

    Adult Pc Games on April 3rd, 2009 at 3:55 pm - Permalink

  15. FRATLOUNGE.COM is the newest and hottest live video streaming site out there. it looks like myspace and has a chat room like stickam but you can broadcast like justin tv from you myspace like page its great there even selling the software so other websites can do it.

    jedi on May 27th, 2009 at 5:32 pm - Permalink

Leave a reply








Safari hates me

If your comment doesn't show up immediately, it may have gotten caught in our trusty (but occasionally overly ambitious) spam filter. Please drop us a note and we'll retrieve it.