MSN announced that they broke a new record for the number of live streams for an entertainment program: 9 million during the Live Earth global pop concerts. MSN product manager said the number of streams had surpassed the previous record held by 2005’s Live 8 global concerts to fight poverty (5 million people).
Control Room, producer of Live Earth and Live 8, said it found that the on-demand streams in the days after had the most impact, especially after clips were passed around by e-mail. Live 8 were streamed by users more than 100 million times in the six weeks following the shows.
CNN live video now free
CNN has ended its Pipeline program and has launched its free live streams site. There are at least three choices of streams to watch. The player has a black background and links to a few stories. There remains the video to 16:9 widescreen even the video was shot in 4:3.
A user-generated content initiative at ABC News
ABC News has launched a user-generated content initiative with a companion TV show (scheduled for August 6th), called i-Caught. Their idea is to combine existing user video with new clips submitted by viewers.
They promise to offer “the incredible stories behind the video.”
AOL announces its new video portal and a Windows Vista gadget
AOL has launched its new video portal. The design is pretty old, but the video search works well, pulling in a wide variety of sources, including MSN, CNN, YouTube, CBS News and others. AOL says that “the portal is designed to make it even easier for consumers to find, watch and share more than 20 million videos from across the Web without having to visit multiple website”.
In addition, AOL also announced the availability of the new Windows Vista ready sidebar gadget which enables consumers to watch video content while using other applications. It features five channels –news, music, movies, comedy and business- each showcasing 10 of the most recent or most popular videos in each channel. It has 12 skins in various colors and patters, as well as a real-time ticker that highlights relevant videos. AOL Video Gadget is available as a free download here.
Airlines introduce on-demand video systems
A few airlines carriers are introducing innovative in-flight on-demand video systems. For instance, Delta on Demand features 24 channels of live television, up to 28 films, 12 video games, more than 1,600 songs and 45 hours of HBO programming, including episodes of popular television shows. The system is now on 100 aircraft, including economy class on some planes.
Singapore Airlines, which operates some of the longest commercial flights, is introducing a free entertainment system featuring 1,004 on-demand music and video options, as well as a suite of office applications that enable passengers to plug in a portable flash drive and work on their documents.
More carriers are installing these types of on-demand systems, either at the seatback or as a stand-alone device, like the portable player American Airlines offers on some flights.
Stickam.com, the live video chats MySpace, linked to pornography
Free video site Stickam.com, which allows its 600,000 registered users (many of them teenagers) to participate in unfiltered live video chats using their Web camera, often from their bedrooms, has close ties to a large online pornography business, according to a former vice president of the company, called Advanced Video Communications.
Stickam shares office space, employees and computer systems with pornographic sites like DxLive, EXshot and JgirlParadise. The video technology to link paying users with performers in one-on-one video chat sessions is the same.
Enough is Enough, an Internet safety organization, said that “this is just another adult operator looking for a back door to the youth market.”
