Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 3:00 AM PT

One to Watch: Qik Live Video

Kyte.tv, Justin.tv, Zannel, Seesmic and the like had better watch out: A startup we just heard about is doing live video streaming directly from cell phones. The service, called Qik, is a product of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Visivo Communications. We haven’t yet had a chance to talk to the company or try it ourselves, but if you have a fancy Nokia phone you should try to get into the alpha test.

Here’s the big-picture idea from the Visivo about page:

Visivo is an early stage, well funded startup that is pioneering the next generation of video communication experience that is embedded into web pages and social networks and seamlessly works across all devices – from cell phone, game consoles to computers.

The Qik site describes the product as “a little piece of software that enables you to stream videos directly from your phone to the Web.” It supports both private and public video viewing, and you can automatically send your videos to Twitter as well as archive them for later viewing. Visivo’s team, lead by CEO Ramu Sunkara, has experience with video conferencing and VoIP from Oracle and SPIRIT DSP.

As we mentioned above, the technological advance of streaming live from a handset would be a step up from personal video products from companies like Kyte.tv, Justin.tv, Zannel and Seesmic — which either have a lag time for uploading video or require a videocamera that’s an additional standalone device or attached to a cumbersome computer. There are a lot of startups attacking the same market from slightly different angles, but this is one of the first we’ve seen that may have mastered video streams right from the cell phone. We’ll have to see if Qik can survive the pitiful bandwidth we get on mobile networks.

AT&T is also running trials of a live video-sharing service, as it discussed at NewTeeVee Live.

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Topic: Startups

Comments (11)

I think they are not alone. I came across these guys about a month ago http://www.flixwagon.com and registered to the alpha. Got my account a week ago and this is for real!! very good quality broadcast and got it working also on my Sony Ericsson with a J2ME client.
The Alpha is almost fully featured and feels like a social network app. Just from watching QIK videos it seems that Flixwagon has an advantage but let’s see.

Flixwagon claims they will be open soon…

Daniel — 4:04 AM on December 11, 2007 Reply
There are plenty of competitors in this space. Two companies that come to mind are Floobs and Sofia Digital.

fideocam — 4:51 AM on December 11, 2007 Reply
this is the Revolution thaty the Live Video industry (well its users ) has been waiting for.

Matt_ — 4:56 AM on December 11, 2007 Reply
Wow, great minds think alike :) [i.e. the market is happening!]

With Flixwagon you can broadcast your life LIVE and share it with your family, friends and your favorite social websites. live. really.

You’re very welcomed to join our alpha :)

http://www.flixwagon.com

Xen Mendelsohn — 6:15 AM on December 11, 2007 Reply
blogTV does is for the last 2 years in Israel….

Tim — 8:54 AM on December 11, 2007 Reply
I tried Qik and the quality is crap. Nice idea though.

Dan L. — 10:41 AM on December 11, 2007 Reply
Have you guys tried kyte.tv? It’s really easy to use and the possibilities in terms of sharing content are endless. You can upload content from your phone to the kyte application. Also, it works incredible with myspace and facebook…….it’s worth checking out.

shazmania — 5:23 PM on December 11, 2007 Reply
There’s also ComVu which I used for a live stream form my kitchen back in April.

http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/006757.html

steve Garfield — 2:26 AM on December 12, 2007 Reply
The problem with all these companies is that their service only works on Symbian based Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets. Which in turn are irrelevant for this market

We need to see stuff that works that are not Java based or on a Symbian platform.

Luis — 11:17 PM on December 18, 2007 Reply
Luis, Kyte runs on my SonyEricsson W810.
This is, as far as i know, a non symbian phone.
I have a java app on my phone that allows me to produce…

Steve — 5:57 PM on January 29, 2008 Reply
You must be kidding, right? The guys from bambuser, working from their living room it seems, have been doing this for over a year with all sorts of phones! Try it- it’s free, it works, and you can even use your phone as a web cam over wi-fi…

ed — 4:57 PM on May 6, 2008 Reply

Linkbacks (14)

[...] is getting to be a crowded business — Liz wrote about Qix earlier this week — and I have heard of another couple of companies that are trying to go [...]

At Le Web, Video Is The Buzz - GigaOM — 12:58 AM on December 12, 2007
[...] Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Draper Richards in its initial funding round, has an edge over some of its rivals, though the company needs to work hard to make its solutions simpler and easier to use. The good [...]

Another $5.6 Million for Kyte.tv «… — 9:36 AM on December 12, 2007
[...] NewTeeVee actually had this last week but didn’t see it live in action like I did tonight. Filed under: Qik, cell phones, [...]

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[...] NewTeeVee actually had that last week but didn’t see it live in action like I did [...]

First look: Qik video streaming from cell… — 12:47 AM on December 16, 2007
[...] week we told you about Qik, prompting our knowledgeable readers to offer up names of other service providers, [...]

Another New Live Video Play: Flixwagon «… — 12:35 PM on December 18, 2007
[...] Malik, Tuesday, December 18, 2007 at 2:24 PM PT Comments (0) Last week we told you about Qik, prompting our knowledgeable readers to offer up names of other service providers, [...]

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[...] Next2Friends Launches Rich Media Mobile Applications; new service offers live-streaming (like Qik), and video messaging (like Seesmic), among other features. [...]

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» Next2Friends spouští rich-media… — 1:33 AM on January 6, 2008
[...] are best experienced without delay. We’ve reported on offerings from companies like Qik and Flixwagon that send up video from fancy cell phones. This only gets more accessible to the [...]

One to Watch: LiveU « NewTeeVee — 12:00 AM on February 14, 2008
[...] Qik — If you’re familiar with Justin.tv, you’ve seen life-casting. Now you can [...]

10 Apps To Have For Your Symbian S60 Phone… — 7:14 AM on February 20, 2008
[...] were first to report on Qik last December, shortly after the company opened its private alpha. Since then, Qik has [...]

Qik Confirms Funding, Shares Plans «… — 11:25 AM on April 9, 2008
[...] a Foster City, Calif.-based company that we broke the story on last December, has become very popular with the blogger crowd, who have done a great job of [...]

Qik Expands to Windows Mobile, Seeking Bigger… — 10:35 PM on June 5, 2008
[...] broke the initial story on Qik back in the day, and played around with a tester phone when we went to the Webby Awards. Our [...]

Qik Opens to Public « NewTeeVee — 10:04 PM on July 20, 2008
[...] Qik — If you’re familiar with Justin.tv, you’ve seen life-casting. Now you can [...]

Dzigh (dot) com » Blog Archive »… — 3:31 PM on November 14, 2008