Ustream and Qik get funded: the lifestreaming phenomenon has life
The “lifestreaming” phenomenon streams onward and upward, or at least a few companies in the venture capital space hope so.
Ustream.tv is announcing that it is raising $11.1 million, which is on the heels of Qik’s $3 million round.
In late March I noted this about Ustream: It’s a potent and timely mix, video and social networking and a real-time communications experience. I’m curious to see where this will go.
In my view, Ustream is a lot stronger and healthier platform as compared to Qik, which centers around live video streaming from mobile phones. I think this space will be huge in a few years (and perhaps less, who knows?) but the quality of the video I’ve watched on Qik has been bad enough to make me shut it off. Whereas with Ustream it’s a lot easier to “get”: (watchable) live video broadcasting with a suite of easy-to-use social networking and chat features built around it. Great place to go if you want to set up your own video chat show. Host impromptu live meetings by making an announcement on Twitter or another real time communications application where you can reach a lot of people immediately. Get it, makes lots of sense.
I haven’t played with Qik a lot so don’t want to be totally unfair to it, but I sense that it has a ways to go before it can attract a huge audience. And perhaps it’s unfair to compare Ustream and Qik directly as they are not exactly the same. If Qik can improve video streaming quality (no easy task!) it could be a killer app. And for all I know it just might be anyway: people love using their mobile phones to do so, and if you can stream live video and create an audience around that, that will certainly catch on.
Other lifestreaming-type services include Kyte.tv and Justin.tv. I haven’t head a lot about Justin.tv of late, but it seems to be quietly streaking up the Alexa rankings at the least, clocking in under the 1000 mark yesterday.
So that might help us to understand why there’s a spurt of funding going on round the lifestreaming junction at the moment.
Recent Entries
- How will Twitter ever make money?
- Google Earth comes to life-like
- Grand Theft Auto IV goes very very old school
- Gadgets threaten the Internet’s future? Ridiculous
- The online video monetization equation (or, how do you make money on this stuff?)
- Using smart content aggregation and smart people networks to beat back the over coverage plague
- Creative destruction and the online video gold rush
- What’s in a game? (Or, how Grand Theft Auto IV reminded me yet again that everything’s changing quick-like)
- Grand Theft Auto IV is stunning
- Facebook comes a knocking at your door
