SOMEWHAT FRANK

BlogTV For Personalized Live Web TV

BlogTV is an Israel-based company that enables people to create their own live broadcast channel on the Web. Similar to UStream.tv, BlogTV empowers anyone with a webcam to create a destination channel for broadcasting live episodes.

I got a chance to sit down with BlogTV Vice President of Product & Content, Nir Ofir, at Supernova 2007 and got a live demo. While demonstrating the features of BlogTV, Nir showed its unique ability to connect two broadcasts together as co-hosts. The screen-shot (shown below) displays the live broadcast in which Nir connected us (Frank Gruber and Jen Consalvo) with Jeff Pulver on PulverTV. I do not believe UStream.tv or other services offer this type of service but would love to hear if there are other services out there that do something similar.

A BlogTV channel includes live chat collaborations tools and user contributed ratings. Users can record broadcasts or stream them live with the option to embed the show into other sites and blogs. In the short demo we saw, BlogTV appeared to work well, however we did notice a bit of a delay between the two co-hosts on the show. I am not sure if that was due to the poor Internet connection at Supernova or if it was the actual application itself - it could have been attributed to a number of things.

Bottom-line: BlogTV is a platform that enables users to create live broadcast channels via a webcam with ease.

UStream.tv To Broadcast Yourself Live

While online video upload sites have become extremely popular in the web 2.0 movement, it appears that live streaming video seems to be catching on fast. UStream.tv offers users the ability to create their own live web channel with live chat functionality.  Streaming video is by no means a new concept but the UStream.tv platform does make it easy for anyone with a web camera to become a real-life Truman Show like Justin.tv.

When I asked UStream.tv CEO Chris Yeh about their product he had this to offer:

“Our story is simple. We're bringing live internet video to everyone.  By removing the barriers to broadcasting, we allow the creativity of our users to flourish.  While many experiments will fail, UStream.tv is the test tube that will help build the future of media.”

Over the past week I have experienced the trend first hand as several people I encountered were using UStream.tv to bring streaming reality broadcasts to the web. At the Web 2.0 Expo I was interviewed by Jeremiah Oywang live via UStream, I also ran into Justin.tv at a couple of different events and Sarah Meyers, Lindsay Docherty and Brian Solis even got into the Justin.tv act. Blog veterans Robert Scoble and Chris Pirrillo are also getting into the act and leveraging UStream.tv to produce live broadcasts.

In attempting to watch UStream.tv I have experienced some poor video quality issues but I figure they will subside with time. I think that we are only at the beginning of what streaming web tv has to offer and UStream.tv is a vaulable part of the evolution process. Check out the end of my chat with Jeremiah Oywang in the hallway of the Web 2.0 Expo below to see the video quality I was referring to - it is a little choppy but still could be effective.