'Net Features : livestream

LiveStream on Facebook

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:20:00 GMT

If you’re interested in broadcasting events live on the Web (not to mention mobile devices or your own website) this one’s for you.

Video service and destination Livestream made a whopper of an announced today - users can now stream (live stream mind you) directly to Facebook – that’s pretty big news in the world of video.

As you might imagine, the opportunities here are endless for marketing and sales professionals. Everything from full scale live webinars to more intimate presentations can be conducted... on Facebook - courtesy of the Livestream app.

All that is required, besides having a livestream account, is to download Livestream’s desktop app (free) dubbed Livestream Procaster and within one-click you’ll be posting your live video stream onto your Facebook pages.

Additional features include the ability to manage multiple pages, add a chat box next to the player, and brand the player (customization options include the ability to add header images).

LiveStream API's Make Video Streaming More Accessible

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:54:00 GMT

Livestream has opened up its live video streaming platform by releasing several APIs, enabling Livestream’s free and premium service to be integrated into in-house or third party online video platforms and players.

What this means is that users (customers, programmers, and web) can build their own Livestream powered video players and clip libraries using HTML, Adobe Flash or Adobe Flex development environments. Other Platform API’s released today include the Live Publishing API, Guide API, Account API and Chat API.

The most notable implimentation of the Livestream API is a plug-in LiveStream jointly developed with video platform Brightcove. Brightcove customers can stream live and linear video via Livestream into their existing Brightcove player.

“Livestream is an important partner for us as we look to meet the increased demand for high quality live streaming among our global customer base,” said Chris Johnston, director of technology partnerships at Brightcove. “In partnering with organizations like Livestream, we’re able to provide customers with seamless access to a broad feature set for live publishing, distribution and analytics.”

TubeMogul Upgraded Analytics Unveiled

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:45:00 GMT

An 85,000 user strong video syndication service, TubeMogul (now called LiveStream) announced the latest version of its analytics platforms is now available.

The company's free inPlay analytics technology now tracks 15 different video sites including Brightcove, DailyMotion, MetaCafe, blip.tv, Break.com, Howcast, eBaum’s World, Graspr, GrindTV, Sclipo, Webcastr, Viddler, 5min, Streetfire.net and Sevenload.

While inPlay provides some valuable data including standardized per-second audience drop off, referral sites and terms and geography, you might notice that YouTube is absent from those video portals listed above. If analytics on YouTube video usage are important (and they should be) it might be wise to keep YouTube promotions separate as professional account holders at YouTube have a good bit of analytics at their disposal already.

These metrics will be free to all users not putting out overtly commercial content - not sure what "overtly commercial" means but I'm sure we'll find out. Overall, it's very valuable information. According to TubeMogul/LiveStream, "This is the type of data that top advertisers and media companies often pay top dollar for just for their own sites, and we are giving away a cross-site version for free! We hope that this public, census-based data will illuminate viewing behavior online much more than the simple metric of video “views,” which are counted on most sites as soon as a video stream starts."