When Facebook launched its latest redesign, it became evident that the company was putting a lot of emphasis on real-time information--inspired, undoubtedly, by the runaway success of Twitter. Now the company's rolled out two small but crucial new features that put instant updates even more front and center.
First, Facebook is aiming to use the "publisher" tool--formerly known as the status update box--as members' gateway to the Web at large. Starting Wednesday and rolling out gradually, according to a post on the company blog, a beta version of the new content-sharing box will allow members to select exactly how public or private to make each piece of content that they share. The post by Facebook engineer Ola Okelola explained that something shared on a profile can be visible by friends, friends of friends, friends and networks (school, region, or company), user-created custom friends groups--or everyone on the Web.
Facebook's probably hoping that this will spur people to share more content: if members know that sharing a video, a photo, or even a status message won't by default go out to everyone who can see their profile, they might be more likely to share things along the lines of party photos and videos of their kids.
But, wait. There's more.
In addition, a post on the Facebook developer blog Wednesday explained that developers can now take advantage of live-streaming status update boxes much like the one that CNN used during President Obama's inauguration this January. "With the Live Stream Box on your website, users log in using Facebook Connect and share updates that appear both within the Live Stream Box and on their Facebook profiles and in their friends' home page Streams," the post by Tom Whitnah explained. "Each post includes a link back to the Live Stream Box on your site so users can discover the live event and immediately join based on their friends' recommendations."
It's intended so that people watching an event simultaneously can comment in sync on Facebook. And it's also supposed to be a no-brainer to create your own, meaning that Facebook is hoping a lot of developers and site owners will jump on this bandwagon.
"The Live Stream Box is easy to install and takes just a minute to set up," the post added. "To get the Live Stream Box on your website, get a Facebook API key, upload a small file to your website, and then embed a few lines of code into your Web page."
This is a move clearly aiming in the direction of Twitter, where real-time updates and discussions around events have become so commonplace that members regularly agree on a "hashtag" to flag related posts in advance of the event. (For the inauguration, for example, it was #inaug09.) The question is whether Twitter use has already become the standard for chronicling and commenting on events in real time--will enough people be willing to use Facebook widgets rather than apps built on Twitter?
Want to feel old? This album came out 15 years ago.
Hulu will live-stream a concert for the first time: Dave Matthews Band at New York's Beacon Theater on June 1.
The online video hub, which announced the event Thursday, will be the only place streaming the concert live, at least legally.
Pop culture brush-up: the Dave Matthews Band was really, really, really huge in the '90s, known for lengthy live jams, for a Phish-like cult following that skewed more preppy than hippie, and for "Ants Marching," which was inescapable if you ever got anywhere near a frat house between 1994 and 1997. People generally loved them or hated them back then, due in no small part to the fact that they were the soundtrack of choice for the jocks rather than the indie kids or nerds.
It's a good fit for Hulu's first live concert broadcast--the site's first live streaming event was a presidential debate last October. The Dave Matthews Band's original Gen-X and Gen-Y fan base is exactly the demographic of 20- and 30-somethings--though not necessarily tech-savvy ones--who would tune into a concert stream online. And conveniently, the date of the show is the day before the band's long-anticipated new album, "Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King," hits stores online and offline.
Frontman Dave Matthews was, on an unrelated note, one of the first mainstream musicians to use Twitter actively.
Hulu, meanwhile, is riding the wave of mainstream success in the wake of an edgy TV ad campaign and the big news that Disney would be joining News Corp. and NBC Universal as a partner in the joint venture.
Sending a Qik video stream to Facebook via Windows Mobile
(Credit: Qik)In the live-streaming wars, mobile service Qik has a new weapon in its arsenal: integration with Facebook's video player.
Thanks to Facebook Connect, Qik members can now automatically upload their videos to Facebook, set their status messages to link to the video on Qik when they start live-streaming, and have the update show up in their news feeds. Windows Mobile smartphone users (non-touchscreen) can also selectively upload Qik videos to Facebook, an extra feature that the company hopes to roll out to other devices soon.
You can't use Qik to live-stream videos directly on Facebook, at least not yet. But regardless, it's the first mobile video app to allow automatic uploads to Facebook through the social network's application program interface, Qik representatives said.
Live streaming, much like location-based mobile networking, is one of those niches of social media that doesn't have a real frontrunner yet. There are a ton of players in the space, both Webcam- and mobile-focused, and getting a few extra steps ahead is often a matter of being the first to get on a popular platform.
First announced last week, live video streaming service UStream.tv's iPhone app is finally out and free for downloading. It lets you view live and pre-recorded UStream content from the comfort of your phone. I was using it to watch some of the inauguration coverage earlier this morning, however for most it will simply be a way to get at pre-recorded content from their device.
The app lets you both search and browse through UStream content, and will begin playing shows almost immediately. Included is live user chat, which is displayed below or to the side of the video, depending on how you're holding your device. You'll need to be logged in to see and leave comments, otherwise the space simply stays grayed out.
Watching shows on UStream on the iPhone is a breeze, the connection drops and Wi-Fi requirement might kill some of the fun though.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET Networks)The one big caveat with this app is that you need to be connected to Wi-Fi to use it, as the app does not yet work over 3G or slower EDGE networks. Attempting to use it without being connected to Wi-Fi simply kicks you back to your phone's home screen. The same thing happens if you go too far out of range of that Wi-Fi network. I see this as the one big deal killer, since you may not always be near a Wi-Fi connection when wanting to access UStream programming.
Besides video, the standout feature is the audio quality, which is comparable to what you'd get on your computer. This is no doubt due to requiring Wi-Fi. The audio I was getting from CNN's inauguration feed came in loud and clear.
Not so hot were the frequent stutters and dropped connections that made me miss several chunks of live footage while watching a buffering screen. If UStream can iron out some of these kinks and let users get a more lightweight stream over 3G, this app would be a real keeper.
Ashton Kutcher
(Credit: Andrew Mager/CBS Interactive)
What a pairing: Hollywood slacker-hottie icon Ashton Kutcher and Silicon Valley slacker-hottie icon Kevin Rose have teamed up to create 24 Hours at Sundance, a Web-based reality show set at the eponymous film festival in Park City, Utah, later this week.
Backed by mobile live-streaming start-up Qik, the competition-focused show will pit four "social media mavens" against one another for 24 straight hours as they complete a set of challenges surrounding the annual film festival and broadcast them via Qik software on Nokia handsets. Rose (best known for founding Digg) and Kutcher, the Dude, Where's My Car actor whose production company Katalyst Media has created a Web show called Blah Girls, will co-host.
The four "social media mavens" are VentureBeat editor Matt Marshall, gadget blogger Meghan Asha, Konsole Kingz founder CJ Peters, and video blog personality Irina Slutsky.
"I kind of feel like there's been a trend in entertainment in general that moves toward a more visceral, more live experience," Kutcher told CNET News. "We have an idea of what we want to happen, but who knows what's actually going to happen."
Kevin Rose
(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News)"I don't think I've ever heard of anything else that's been done like this before, especially with the real time nature," Rose added. "It's only a matter of time before people in Hollywood and just everyone in general wants to participate and have a way to live-stream and connect with people they care about." Well, maybe not everyone.
From what it sounds like, dot-com culture geeks may find this fairly amusing. Kutcher told CNET News that one of the challenges will involve tracking down and interviewing dot-com icon Jason Calacanis, who will be present at Sundance. The Weblogs Inc. and Mahalo founder relocated to the L.A. area several years ago and has started to get a foothold in the Hollywood scene.
"It's unbelievable, it's like him versus (Robert) DeNiro for roles," Kutcher joked of Calacanis, who played himself in last year's film August, which chronicled a failing fictional dot-com. "It's getting out of control."
Live-streaming platform Justin.tv now supports high-resolution videos using H.264 encoding. The codec, which has made headway in consumer electronics, is also a great format for the Web since it can fit high resolutions in relatively small file sizes--making it ideal for something like streaming.
For now there are a few caveats that keep it from being accessible to the average user. For one, videos streamed in high resolution H.264 will not be saved into user archives, and there is no way to do it without using special software to process the stream before it hits Justin.tv's servers.
Users are encouraged to be running a rig with a fast processor and modern graphics card, as it takes some considerable horsepower to crunch down video in real time. Eventually the company hopes to offer such processing power on its own servers, so that you'll be able to get similar results with any commodity high-resolution Webcam and a good connection.
The company has posted how-to streaming guides for Windows and Mac on its blog.
Update at 5:55 a.m. PDT: Additional TV stations airing the debate live have been added.
This is Hulu's new election hub.
(Credit: Hulu)Last year, it was all about "remixing" debate footage. But this year, it's about seeing it live.
Video content hub Hulu has secured the rights to stream the remaining two presidential debates live on the Web. The next debate is set for Tuesday night.
The news was first reported by PaidContent that Hulu has launched Election '08 hub for the live debate, as well as past election-related footage. That includes footage from political satire talk shows The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, the only two MTV Networks shows currently on Hulu.
This is the first-ever live broadcast for Hulu, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.
Cable channel Current, co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, is streaming all presidential debates live on the Web as part of its "Hack the Debate" partnership with Twitter.
Most major television broadcasters and news channels are airing the debate live, of course, including ABC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, Fox, Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, PBS, and Telemundo.
Hulu will also, according to PaidContent, also be the venue for the debut of Crawford, a documentary about the town best known for President Bush's ranch.
Joost, the video content site that everyone thought would be a runaway success, began offering live TV for the first time this past spring, starting with the NCAA "March Madness" basketball tournament.
News Corp.'s MySpace has the presidential debate stamp of approval.
The social network has been officially sanctioned by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) to launch MyDebates.org, which will debut Wednesday. The site offers a downloadable app that will stream the presidential debates live, archive them for on-demand viewing (searchable and tagged, naturally), participate in polls, and track the candidates' stances on issues.
The first presidential debate is September 26, followed by a vice presidential debate on October 2. This marks the first time that the CPD has officially partnered with a Web property for debate coverage.
Since the early days of the '08 electoral process, MySpace has been launching high-profile activism initiatives through "MySpace Impact," a nonpartisan politics site. The social network has rolled out a register-to-vote contest geared toward indie bands, a citizen-journalism competition in conjunction with MSNBC, an NBC News-powered election site, and a series of polls. In addition, the site held a series of candidate "dialogues" in partnership with MTV.
MySpace, and social networks in general, were far more under-the-radar in the last presidential election cycle, so their potential impact on turnout, awareness, and election results remains unmeasured. But the site's stereotype as a teen hub shouldn't get in the way: MySpace says that four-fifths of its members are of voting age.
If you're a college basketball fan, March clearly holds a special place in your heart. It brings the NCAA tournament (also known as March Madness), along with the occasional bit of that annoying thing called work or school. If you're somehow in a position of being unable to make it to your giant, high-definition television, Joost's got you covered. The software-based video content network is streaming all of the games (with limited commercial interruption) live, as they happen.
The resolutions for the live streams is expected to fall in line with the rest of Joost's programming. This is aided by the fact that the stream is being given a hand by distributed P2P instead of a typical server farm--a system that's prone to fail or slow down without heavy infrastructure investment. Using distributed content serving can help, which is where Joost's P2P technology can show its chops for something other than prerecorded content.
To see how well the new system would handle the load, the company ran a stress test earlier today, utilizing the live user chat hooked up to a video feed from the company's offices. It didn't last too long though, as the streams were discontinued about an hour after their start at 11 a.m. PST.
The move is an important step in differentiating Joost from some Web-based content providers--notably Hulu, which left private beta yesterday and serves up archived television content (just like Joost). With the right participation of content providers, Joost could serve up live television streams (not just this test run with the NCAA) as they happen.
Live video streams will show up in the content source bar in Joost. Seen today are two of the five live feeds used to stress-test the new system.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
A new video streaming service called Qik has been getting some buzz lately. If you're familiar with UStream.tv, Veodia, and Comvu, the idea for Qik is similar: take a mobile phone with a video camera on a fast mobile connection, and stream video live for other people to watch. The service borrows a page from Kyte.tv and UStream in integrating live chat that allows broadcasters to interact with the users--although Qik steps it up a notch by letting the broadcaster simply reply using the phone's integrated microphone instead of having to type out text on the phone's keypad.
To compensate for network lag, the application will calculate the delay and show it in the corner of the screen. In testing over a 3G connection I got the delay up to about a minute, although if you're using the service over Wi-Fi, it's extremely nimble. You can also record videos for uploading later, when away from a data stream of Wi-Fi hot spot. The next time you connect, it'll automatically upload your video--which is a nice touch.
Live video on Qik is a little on the grainy side, but what do you expect--it is almost live from your pocket.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The beauty of Qik is that it's wonderfully simple to use and participate in. People viewing your video either via Qik.com or on a video embed can chat if it's live, and the second it goes offline, the player acts just like any other Web video, and turns the live chat into a comment thread. While the quality of the video leaves something to be desired when compared with Web video hosting services like YouTube, Viddler and Vimeo, it's limited to the mobile network connection and the often lackluster lenses found on camera phones. Qik's creators tell me there are plans to add a higher quality stream to the Nokia N95 and other high-end handsets in the near future.
The service is currently in private alpha, and limited to a range of Nokia phones on the S60 platform. The application itself is only a little over 300k, and downloads in seconds. We didn't get a chance to give it a spin over a slower connection like EDGE, but based on the 3G performance, you likely wouldn't want to. In the pipeline for future updates are mobile-to-mobile streaming (sending and receiving video), integration with social networking sites like Facebook, and additional handset support.
I've embedded an example of Qik after the break. You can also check out whoever's live streaming at the moment on the service's live page.
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