YouTube, sounding a little miffed that House representatives were live streaming their sit-in
using Periscope and Facebook Live, reminded its community that it has been offering live
streaming on its site since 2011, “before it was cool,” the company snarked in a series of
announcements emerging from this week’s VidCon event.
That may be true, but a single-purpose apps like Periscope are easier to use, which aided in its
adoption. It caters to those who want more of a push-button experience: click to go live.
YouTube, now scrambling to catch up, says it will update its mobile application so that the
ability to go live will be baked right in.
According to the company, the main YouTube mobile app will be redesigned to include a big red
capture button that will allow video creators to immediately broadcast what they’re seeing. This
button was introduced last year in order to make it simpler to record videos on the go. (The fact
that it didn’t occur to YouTube at that time to also introduce a live streaming component is
something it’s probably regretting these days.)
If anyone was poised to capitalize on the renewed interest in live streaming, it should have been
YouTube.
The technology had matured from the earlier days of “mobile livecasting” where apps like
Flixwagon, Qik, Kyte and others were vying to become the dominant streaming video service.
But these apps were before their time – mobile bandwidth that could handle live streams wasn’t
as available as it is today; not everyone even carried a smartphone; some apps required
jailbreaking to use; and it wasn’t as seamless to distribute the videos as it is now, where they
move instantly across channels like Facebook and Twitter reaching millions of viewers.
With last year’s debut of Meerkat and its subsequent popularity following SXSW 2015, the writing
was on the wall: the time to return focus on live broadcasting had arrived. The pain points of the
past had been resolved, and the only real question is whether the market would end up
consolidating around one or two key players, or whether an ecosystem of niche live streaming
services would bloom.
But while YouTube, indeed, has had the tools on hand for years as well as the robust
technology to support live streaming, it missed out on truly popularizing the feature among
mainstream users. Live streaming is something “bigger” creators took advantage of, while the
rest of us everyday people picked up Periscope.
After all, there’s a reason why a bunch of politicians – not necessarily the most technically-
minded folks – whipped out their smartphones and launched Periscope. The app is
straightforward and easy to use. It’s engaging, too – with the ability to chat to the video creator
and send “hearts” to show your support.
YouTube’s mobile redesign looks strikingly similar to Periscope, in fact. Text chat bubbles are
overlaid on the video so the creator can talk to fans in near real-time, for example. It’s like
YouTube was taking notes.
But don’t count out YouTube yet by any means. Periscope, and now, Facebook Live (thanks
mainly to that viral Chewbacca video) may be winning the battle for mindshare, but YouTube is
gearing up for war.
When creators go live on YouTube, they’ll be able to capitalize on the sizable fan bases they’ve
developed over the years on the site. Viewers will then be alerted when their favorite creators
kick off a live stream. And these notifications are a powerful mechanism YouTube has at its
disposal – the company noted that it’s today sending out 10 billion notifications per month to
alert subscribers to new videos. Also, more than a thousand of its new creators reach the 1,000
subscriber month every day, which demonstrates the network’s reach.
Then there’s the fact that when a livestream is popular on YouTube, it’s very, very popular. The
360-degree livestream of this year’s Coachella saw over 21 million people tuning in – or, as
YouTube points out, that’s almost twice as many as tuned in to watch the series finale of
American Idol. (Sure, American Idol is no longer the behemoth it once was, but those numbers
are still worth bragging about.)
Plus, because live streaming is a part of YouTube, the streams will have all the same features of
regular videos – they can be surfaced via YouTube search as well as via recommendations and
playlists, and they can be protected from unauthorized uses.
Perhaps most importantly of all, is that these videos can take advantage of YouTube’s peerless
infrastructure. As YouTube promises, “it’ll be faster and more reliable than anything else out
there.” Reliability is something Periscope struggles with, at times. During the C-SPAN Periscope
live stream from the House floor, for example, the feed had several issues. It even entirely froze
at multiple points. (C-SPAN later cut over to a Facebook Live feed instead.)
In other words, YouTube may have been late in its attempt at mainstreaming the technology it
has offered for years, but when the live streaming feature arrives in the #5 free application in the
App Store, and made push-button simple, it will likely be a force to be reckoned with.
YouTube says the new live streaming functionality will arrive on mobile “soon.”
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