Live video broadcasting service Ustream.tv will announce tomorrow that live feeds on the company's website and distributed video players got a combined 10 million unique viewers last month. If those numbers are solid, it's a major validation of live streaming video on the web.
When YouTube Live launches later this year, this medium is only going to get bigger.
Churches, rock stars and politicians have been taking UStream out of the tech blogger niche, there's now an impressive line-up of live and recorded content on the site. Each of the videos below, for example, has been viewed more than 25,000 times. The live video of Obama's victory speech only has 75,000 views - so there's a lot more going on than just that! Ten million monthly uniques is surprisingly high, but appears to be a credible claim.
The company says that these 10 million uniques come from the whole UStream network, which presumably includes embedded players. Third party traffic analysts Quantcast says that UStream participates in its traffic monitoring program (using embed codes) and reports that the UStream global network gets just under 8 million uniques as far as it's concerned. UStream says Quantcast is new to them and will take some time to catch up in its reporting. That may be a viable explanation, but the numbers are close enough. UStream also reports that their number equals 10 million people actually playing a live video stream - not people who have loaded pages that happen to have an unplayed UStream player embedded in them. It also doesn't include views of recorded videos. That's impressive.
Competitor Mogulus also uses Quantcast, and Quantcast says they have a global network that sees 4.5 million uniques.
Those are serious numbers. We've argued for some time that live video was going to be big, but the pace of growth is a little bit surprising. Note also that UStream was established just over a year ago, in March of 2007. When we reported this week that social news site Mixx hasn't been able to surpass 1 million unique visitors per month in their first year despite links from every story on CNN.com, USAToday, Weather.com and a list of other major media sites - we said there was an integration or audience targeting problem. UStream's 10 million and Mogulus's 4.5 million monthly uniques are what new media technologies look like when they really start to catch on.
Comments
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Most of these numbers are Chris Pirillo.
Hehehe. But this is very interesting. Is this the validation that Google needs to implement live into YouTube? You have to believe its coming/already done.
Posted by: drew olanoff | June 5, 2008 12:59 PM
Thanks for that comment Drew, I added a note about YouTube Live, which Steve Chen says is coming later this year.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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June 5, 2008 1:03 PM
Most of those numbers are Obama - who used it for his speech the other night after the Montana win. Its going mainstream, across the chasm and I am really excited about what this means.
Posted by: Chris Heuer | June 5, 2008 1:04 PM
Chris, thanks for your comment. I updated the post to include that one - note though that it only has 75k views! That's a lot but it aint 10 million! ;)
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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June 5, 2008 1:10 PM
Congrats to both these services. Ustream has impressed me and is leading the charge to make the web live.
I agree, live video will be mainstream, but I still think we are like Youtube was 2 years ago. More growth is ahead..
Wish I had thought of it!
Posted by: PPL Media | June 5, 2008 1:28 PM
And Obama's doesnt begin to compare to Mitt Romney's Faith in America speech on Ustream..
Posted by: pyrillix | June 5, 2008 1:32 PM
It's only natural that internet video becomes a mix of live and prerecorded shows. You have to watch sports live, and politics changes so often that by the time the video is posted, new developments have occurred. On the other hand, things like sitcoms can be watched during free time. Its the natural evolution of tv -> internet.
http://www.notthisgod.blogspot.com
Posted by: NotThisGod | June 5, 2008 1:36 PM
I just read Ustream also added the former Head of Monetization at Youtube to its Board of Directors.
Sounds like they are bringing in the big dogs...congrats
Posted by: CK Burns | June 5, 2008 1:43 PM
Blowing up? On the contrary, live video online has a health, positive future ahead of it, and continues to grow. This is the first time I've heard someone characterize it as destructing. I'm not sure I agree with that assessment.
Posted by: Orphelia | June 5, 2008 2:18 PM
Sorry Orphelia, I meant to use the word as in "rapidly expanding."
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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June 5, 2008 2:36 PM
You probably meant Mogulus, not Mogulous. It might be good (for them especially) to correct it. ;-)
Posted by: Tim | June 5, 2008 5:19 PM
Thanks Tim, fixed it. Might be good for them to not have such a wacked out name ;)
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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June 5, 2008 5:31 PM