The booming popularity of existing services like Justin.tv or Ustream has promoted Google to unsurprisingly respond back with YouTube Live, a live video streaming service for only select and trustworthy users. Unlike other services which allow anyone to launch a live broadcast, YouTube is keeping its Live club exclusive for now, with only high-quality users being asked to participate.
Today we’re announcing the initial roll out of YouTube Live, which will integrate live streaming capabilities and discovery tools directly into the YouTube platform for the first time. This begins with a new YouTube Live browse page (www.youtube.com/live), where you can always find the most compelling live events happening on YouTube and add events to your calendar. Subscribe to your favorite YouTube live-streaming partners to be notified of upcoming live streams on your customized homepage.
Also starting today, beta access will be slowly rolled out to other trusted third party partners and accounts in extremely good standing. Google has been experimenting with YouTube live streaming for quite some time now. Many of its past keynotes have employed the service and Google’s growing interest in streaming live concerts and events on YouTube has ramped up internal development and testing on the project. There is no word to indicate that YouTube Live will be made available to everyone but the press release wording indicates that this is service is only for the upper crust of YouTube accounts and affiliates.
Source: YouTube Blog
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this may put a dent in ustream’s business, but I see nothing of interest other than Wild Earth, right now.
Yeah, it won’t really affect it too much, unless they open it up to everyone instead of keeping it as a walled garden for select users.
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