Google’s YouTube did its first live webcast yesterday in San Francisco. The “acts” were aimed at YouTube meme followers.
A blurb on YouTube’s blog stated viewers could “get all excited over Will.i.am’s appearance; marvel at Chad Vader’s original killer conceit; or deconstruct the intrinsic appeal of Will It Blend?…We’re going all-out to celebrate the best that YouTube’s user community has to offer.”
Katy Perry performed “Hot and Cold, then Beardyman came on, beat-boxing. YouTube PR said they expecting 2-3,000 attendees, and there was a huge round of applause for Tay Zonday. According to TechCrunch, YouTube did 700,000 streams via Akamai.
The much touted Japanese live stream, however, was a flop. Google keeps trying to monetize the bandwidth gobbler youTube, but so far the only real way that seems to work is advertising, advertising and more advertising. What else is new?
Still, YouTube has become an important part of the Google environment, with the comment “I saw it on YouTube” rivaling “I Googled it” in commonplace lingo on the street. As long as the ability to easily share information via video is open, YouTube will be the number one stop for video search and sharing on the user network.
More implementations seem to pop up daily on Google, and YouTube is not left out; the mammoth search engine is striving to make the video site even more accessible and useful as a tool to webmasters as well as a fun site and social network for the masses.
Too bad the live stream didn’t get even more attention, but perhaps they just need to rethink their approach. Some of the material wasn’t really new, and there could have been more publicity and a focus on real, never before seen original content.. With a little tweaking, a YouTube live could be quite a money maker for Google with increased opportunities for advertising.
Tags: Japan, Live broadcast, YouTube