(Annette Moser-Wellman)

If you are The Jonas Brothers, how do you keep in contact with your fan base in a fast, efficient way without the risk of losing your life? How about a live video web broadcast? The band came on Justin.tv soon after the site launched and they got over 80,000 views in an hour. The site crashed. When The Jonas Brothers came back six months later, they got a little over a million views in an hour and the site stayed up. So goes the popularity of live video.

Evan Solomon from Justin.tv talked to me about the popularity of live video and how it's changing the marketplace on the web.

You may remember a guy called Justin Kan. His idea was to broadcast his life by posting live videos about himself. The phenomena became known as life casting and it created a viral tidal wave in 2006. Since that time, streaming live video has taken on a bigger and - not surprisingly - more commercial role. The big players in addition to Justin.tv include Ustream and LiveStream. Justin.tv now has something like 35 to 40 million unique viewers in the last 30 days and has scaled so quickly that they have 250 of their own servers and can handle over a million concurrent views.

From gaming to business, from science shows to the expected social scene, live video may be the next generation communication vehicle. Frankly, surfing these sites is a crazy experience. The video streams span the highs and lows of human creativity - kind of like YouTube on steroids. But why is the appeal of live video that much different than posting a YouTube video?

"If you think of YouTube as your DVR, no matter what point in time you start watching it, you're going to have the same experience," says Solomon. "But being live offers interactivity. YouTube might have comments, but they are not the same as when the broadcaster and the audience can respond in real-time. Overwhelmingly, people come back for the social relationships and connections they make in a live video experience."

It may be a crazy world, but one worth watching. It is significant that businesses are experimenting and participating in deeper ways in live video. The interactivity allowed creates moments for learning that wouldn't necessarily be available in a product like a WebEx that primarily relies on PowerPoints and blind chat. Microsoft recently launched a program that was a late night talk show style event. Twice a week for five weeks, they hosted a series of guests using computers in a different way to promote a laptop campaign. While they used a standard TV format for the show, Microsoft was able to engage the viewers. They took questions from their live audience and also allowed people to call in via Skype and participate in the discussion.

Solomon reports that one of the reasons corporate sponsors love the live video experience is the quality of engagement in the medium. "Our average session is a little over nine minutes on the site," he says. "Across 40 million viewers that's pretty valuable from an advertiser's point of view. Brands are just now figuring out new ways to optimize that audience."

Adidas recently featured Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls. He conducted a live video interview on Justin.tv answering questions about the season and his life. East Bay was the retail partner and they embedded the video on their site. The average viewing time was over 30 minutes per viewer.

"In the world of online content, 30 minutes of engagement is just crazy." says Solomon.


Annette Moser-Wellman is President of Firemark, Inc., an innovation consultancy, and author of Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization and Running While The Earth Shakes: Creating An Innovation Strategy To Win In The Digital Age, both published by the Media Management Center.

This TechScout article is part of a series of Moser-Wellman interviews commissioned by the Media Management Center to explore opportunities and insights at the intersection of technology and the news media. Click here to view other articles in the TechScout series.

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