Last night in Toronto I went down to the launch of BlogTv.ca, a new .com start-up that hopes to be the next YouTube or Google Video. Their point of differentiation: it lets you broadcast live video "tv shows" with just a computer running Windows 98 or better, 128 megs of RAM, an Internet connection and a Web cam.
Had a few minutes to play around with it at the demo stations set up at the launch and it's pretty neat. You can broadcast live shows, I guess letting people know when it starts and posting a link to your page at blogtv.ca to watch it. You can also record and archive your shows for viewing later, and those clips can be embedded in your blog or elsewhere a la Youtube, like I've done here. Was a bit loud there, so my sage pearls of wisdom are unintelligible, but you get the idea.
Mac fans will be disappointed to learn Macs aren't supported yet. Also, at present only videos you record through the site can be on the site, you can't upload completed videos at this time.
At present it's a free service, with some limitations on the amount of video you can archive on your profile. It's unclear to me yet how they plan to monetize (always a key question with .coms). They said last night it would be through co-branding and contests. There's also banner ads. There was no mention of it but I wouldn't be surprised to see premium accounts for pay with expanded capabilities down the road.
An interesting concept though. The quality of service seems good and it's easy to use. And empowering, anyone can be a broadcaster. Will people actually make a point of watching live shows by people on their Web cams though? Hey, no one expected YouTube to take off either and Google made those guys filthy rich, so maybe.
They gave Web cams to everyone at the launch so I'll let you know when I have my first live broadcast...
(edited to remove the embedded video because it starts playing automatically and it's really annoying)
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Blogtv.ca
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
The biggest problem is probably that as a whole bloggers aren't particularly gifted speakers, especially in front of a camera, so its sort of a matter of putting our worst feet forward...
bloggers aren't particularly gifted speakers, especially in front of a camera, so its sort of a matter of putting our worst feet forward
Heh. I know I've always felt I have a face for radio, and a voice for print...
Well, I was there on Wednesday too, but I didn't say hi because I don't know you. Oh well, next time, I guess.
Post a Comment