Twitcam turns Twitter into a video streaming hub

The folks at the video broadcasting service Livestream have a new tool out for Twitter users called Twitcam that lets anyone with a Twitter account start streaming their own show, complete with live chat.

Each page the service creates gets its own URL, which users can come back to at any point and watch once the live-streaming portion of the show is over.

As for the chat, it's all handled via tweets. Anytime someone replies to one of your tweets where the link to the show is included, the app counts it as a reply. It then aggregates these in one place, so everyone who is watching your show can see the entire conversation. It's not exactly the best way to handle it, since sometimes it's nice to have some basic text chatter that doesn't fill up your Twitter stream with stray tweets, but it's done in a way that keeps everything tightly-organized.

Twitcam lets you turn your Twitter stream into a live stream--for video.

(Credit: CNET)

Livestream says that Twitcam was built in about a week and uses new player tools that are going into an updated version of its API that will be released in the near future. The company hopes these will let anyone build a similar service with their own branding, and audience tools--preferably with a chat system that does not require so many tweets.

An archive of the live chat I used while testing this service out is embedded after the jump.

See also: Justin.tv's CamTweet (which is in private beta)

Note: There's no audio on this on purpose. As a company rule we do not have microphones set up that play live audio to outside parties.

[jwmpc]

Better find a new name for it, say "TweetCam" or face some ridicule.

Cool. There's goes the neighborhood bandwidth. ;) Interesting to watch this space to see how/if this develops. Thanks for the share!

[jwmpc]

I'm not sure if this is the way it supposed to be, but I have no audio. Then again, this whole micro blogging thing is new to me.

[Josh.Lowensohn]

It's not just you!--I turned off the audio on my machine. It's a rule here that we keep people outside of the company from hearing newsroom chatter, both for security and because we're often talking about things that cannot be made public.

[sgirard]

I'm not a lawyer, but I think "TWiT" is trademarked for video streaming by This Week in Tech. http://twit.tv

[sgirard]

Search USPTO.gov for "twit" and this is the first result:

TWIT
Goods and Services IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Entertainment in the nature of visual and audio performances, and musical, variety, news and comedy shows. FIRST USE: 20050501. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20050501

[Hunnter2k3]

Doesn't work that way. It is one whole word.

If it DOES work that way though, even more reason for me to hate the way things are.

OMG! i call it Vitter LOL! I have a video of my Pony there and all my friends tweeted about it lol. I love Twitter.

[ca5ter]

Again with the Twitter Talk.

[lorenaflag]

Is there a way to use TWITCAM with my cell phone? Do i have to use LIVESTREAM just with a webcam?????

[Hunnter2k3]

Still can't believe they chose Twitcam, haha.
Not sure if they realized Twit can be an insulting term. (admittedly more of a joke-ish, friendly insult, but in saying that, so can the F, C and D words...)