AllThingsD » broadcasting

Justin.tv Broadcasts Gamers' Every Move on TwitchTV

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:00:57 +0000

An online TV station is launching today to broadcast people playing video games live over the Internet.

It may be a small niche, but it’s a highly profitable one.

TwitchTV is being unveiled today at E3 by Justin.tv, the San Francisco company, which has spent the better part of the past five years building out a live video platform on the Web.

Today’s launch represents the first time it has split off some of its content into an independent brand.

TwitchTV will serve as a meeting place for hardcore gamers who want to watch professional and celebrity players play games live, much how sports fanatics want to watch a basketball or football game live on ESPN.

The video is captured from the TV screen and often accompanied by play-by-play narration.

Justin.tv’s CEO Michael Seibel said “e-sports” has been surprisingly successful since they started playing it six months ago. ”It has become a good portion of our revenues,” he said. “It’s been a cash driver from the get-go. Gaming content monetizes really well.”

Every month, TwitchTV is generating roughly 3.2 million unique visits, 4.5 hours of video per person and more than 45 million total video views. Today, the most popular game being played is StarCraft II.

“We have good relationships with the game publishers,” said Emmett Shear, Justin.tv’s co-founder and CTO. “We’ve noticed that they are hyper-engaged in e-sports. We’ve been talking to studios to make games better for e-sports, by developing features that make better observer modes.”

Both the company and the professional game players are making money on broadcasting games live. Similar to live sports on TV, which have commercials, so does e-sports. Justin.tv is also experimenting with a subscription model, where fans will pay $5 a month or $25 for a season pass.

Also meddling in the space is Los Angeles-based Machinima, which racks up half a billion page views on YouTube in one month.

Viral Video: Facebook Live vs. Google Beat

Kara Swisher — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:15:03 +0000

While the Silicon Valley digital giants are fighting on much bigger playing fields, BoomTown is enjoying the mini-battle brewing between Facebook Live and Google Beat.

What, pray tell, are those?

Well, Facebook Live launched about a month ago, and includes all kinds of insidery videos from the social networking giant.

Facebook Live notes on its Facebook page that it is an “official live video streaming channel, providing a deeper look into our features, partners & employees.”

That includes interviews by Facebook’s marketing exec Randi Zuckerberg, live event streaming and also a look-see at demos.

Google (GOOG) has been putting up a lot of videos on its official YouTube channel for a while now, such as executive talks, tips, product explainers, life-at-Google vignettes and even a Rubik’s Cubes Googley art wall competition.

Now, it seems to have upped the stakes with last week’s launch of Google Beat, which is–as a blog post described it–a video series that “highlights some of the hottest searches on Google in the U.S.”

This past week, searches centered on Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally and hurricane information, which seems like a good fit.

Personally, I like both entries from Facebook and Google and want even more.

What about a look inside Facebook Mark Zuckerberg’s sock drawer? Or perhaps a gander at exactly what Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin searched for over Labor Day?

I say, the more, the merrier–or, in this case, the geekier, the nerdier!

Although here is something to ponder: While Twitter is likely minutes away from broadcasting “Twit Wit,” would Apple (AAPL) ever do something like this?

(Answer: Never ever ever.)

Here are two recent Facebook Live posts–one an interview of the Places team and the other a tech talk on Facebook infrastructure.

They are followed by the first two Google Beat episodes, starring Anne Espiritu, as well as the ever-changing colors of Google’s signature exercise ball.

Enjoy:

NPR's Honchos Talk Digital at "Think In" in San Francisco (Also, Scoble!)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 01:14:24 +0000

Last Friday, National Public Radio CEO Vivian Schiller and Digital Media SVP and GM Kinsey WiIson came to San Francisco for a “Digital Think In” to pick the brains of some Silicon Valley types about where the public radio icon should go, digitally speaking.

While NPR actually has been pretty fast-forward with podcasts and a robust Web site, it still has to think about what social networking means to it and whether a day is coming when broadcasting online will be bigger than offline.

Also, what’s up with Twitter?

These and other questions were discussed at frog design Friday with a passel of Web types like investor Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners, Toni Schneider of Automattic, craigslist founder Craig Newmark and LinkedIn founder and Chairman Reid Hoffman.

Also, ubiquitous blogger Robert Scoble, who wants NPR to open itself up like a can of beans.

The Think In participants were charged with making suggestions related to five main topics: Social media and connection to the audience, NPR’s national network of more than 800 stations, the potential of its open API, expansion of platforms and how to diversify its revenue model.

BoomTown always likes crowdsourcing innovation, even among the digital elite.

While at the event in the morning, I talked to Schiller, who came to NPR last year after a stint as general manager of the New York Times online unit, and also to Wilson, who previously worked as executive editor for USA Today and ran its digital efforts before that.

Along with my video interview with them, below, you can check out some more detailed information from the event here.

Here’s my video:

[ See post to watch video ]

Hurley's Law: Like Moore's Law, but With Doltish Video Clips

John Paczkowski — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:08:04 +0000

Thirteen hours of video are uploaded every minute to YouTube. And, according to YouTube founder Chad Hurley, that figure will grow exponentially until online video broadcasting becomes as ubiquitous as toilet cats on YouTube.

“Our goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate by making the upload process as simple as placing a phone call,” Hurley wrote in an, ahem, “visionary” post to Google’s blog celebrating the company’s tenth anniversary. “This new video content will be available on any screen–in your your living room, or on your device in your pocket. … In 10 years, we believe that online video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording will continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media devices will be universal and interconnected. Even more people will have the opportunity to record and share even more video with a small group of friends or everyone around the world.”

And YouTube will have even more video content to fail to monetize!

Well, presumably Google (GOOG) will have figured out a way to turn YouTube into a profitable business by 2018. Hurley best hope so, because YouTube’s rumored $1 million-a-day bandwidth bills are a bit steep, even for Google.

Hurley's Law: Like Moore's Law, but With Doltish Video Clips

John Paczkowski — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:08:04 +0000

And YouTube will have even more video content to fail to monetize!

Recording Industry Business Model Discovered in Satirical Newspaper

John Paczkowski — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:39:48 +0000

RIAA Sues Radio Stations for Giving Away Free Music

–Headline from satirical newspaper The Onion, Oct. 2, 2002

Talk about life imitating The Onion …

Apparently the recording industry’s institutional memory is about as solid as its crumbling business model. As recently as 2007, it was paying radio stations to play its music. Today, it’s accusing them of pirating it. Yersterday, the ironically named recording industry group musicFIRST demanded that broadcasters pay royalties for the music they play over the radio, dismissing as a red herring their claims that radio airplay is a form of free promotion.

And to illustrate that point, the group sent the National Association of Broadcasters a can of herring and a dictionary. Some clever folks over there at musicFIRST.

“[AM-FM broadcasting is] a form of piracy, if you will, but not in the classic sense as we think of it,” Martin Machowsky, a musicFirst spokesman told Wired. “Today we gifted them a can of herring, about their argument that they provide promotional value. We think that’s a red herring. Nobody listens to the radio for the commercials.”

Well, he got that much right. Nobody does listen to the radio for the commercials. They listen for the music. And there was a time when record labels paid broadcasters to play it. They even coined a word for the practice: payola.

Viacom Wins Shot at Love With Belgian Ale Ballmer

John Paczkowski — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:45:35 +0000

Looking five, six, seven, 10 years ahead, advertising will become 15%, 20%, 25% of Microsoft’s business. As much as people have bones to pick with advertising, people much prefer an advertising-funded experience to one they pay for.”

–Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

Viacom has a new online advertising partner and–big surprise–it’s not Google. It’s Microsoft.

The entertainment broadcaster has signed a far-reaching, five-year strategic partnership with the world’s largest software company valued at approximately $500 million. Under its terms, Microsoft will buy ads across Viacom’s broadcast and online networks and license content from its MTV, Comedy Central, BET and Paramount Pictures properties for use on the MSN Web site and the Xbox 360.

In return, Viacom will adopt Microsoft’s Atlas AdManager digital-advertising technology and grant Redmond the exclusive right to sell remnant display-advertising inventory on its U.S. sites.

Quite the partnership, and one that may further in evolve in the years ahead. “This broad-based relationship will lead to conversations in other business areas,” Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman told Reuters. “What impressed me was the extent to which Microsoft is making the commitment–technological, financial and otherwise–to be a winner in this space.”

“Financial and otherwise,” indeed. As Om Malik notes, Viacom seems to have gotten itself quite a deal from Microsoft. “Viacom doesn’t have to spend anything and at the same time it is getting advertising dollars and more distribution for their content,” he writes. “I get a feeling that, going forward, this is going to become a template deal for all large media companies with content assets. For them it’s a green light to pillage Microsoft’s overflowing coffers. Deals like this will increase the pressure on Google to do similar ones with other content providers, mostly to thwart Microsoft’s advertising ambitions.”

Scary, Baby, Posh, Larry and Sergey …

John Paczkowski — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:50:00 +0000

Google is reportedly talking to Simon Fuller, the British entrepreneur behind the Spice Girls, about a joint venture in the Internet broadcasting market. “It’s a big idea on a global scale,” a source close to Fuller tells the Guardian. “It will change television in much the way iTunes changed music.”

Uh-huh.

Hate to say it, but the idea of Google hooking up with the guy behind the Spice Girls seems about as likely as the company’s founders joining the Spice Girls.

AllThingsD » broadcasting

Justin.tv Broadcasts Gamers' Every Move on TwitchTV

More From E3

Viral Video: Facebook Live vs. Google Beat

NPR's Honchos Talk Digital at "Think In" in San Francisco (Also, Scoble!)

Hurley's Law: Like Moore's Law, but With Doltish Video Clips

Hurley's Law: Like Moore's Law, but With Doltish Video Clips

Recording Industry Business Model Discovered in Satirical Newspaper

Viacom Wins Shot at Love With Belgian Ale Ballmer

Scary, Baby, Posh, Larry and Sergey …