The Power of Live Internet Video

I can’t find many fans of live Internet video around these parts, and I’m not sure why. Live streaming video sites like Justin.tv, Stickam.com, Mogulus.com, ustream.tv, qik.com and the late great Live Yahoo! have been around for several years. When I turn a friend onto a live video channel featuring a musician, comedian, or goofy person that is streaming live video on one of these sites, they are hooked. They spend the next few weeks staying up late at night watching the thousands of broadcasters and love the experience. Maybe no one knows about this stuff yet?

I first heard about the launch of live.yahoo.com several years ago, and started watching to see what was going to happen. It was a brand new community with web cam owners trying to figure out how to entertain other people watching online. There were teenagers trying to make friends and look cool, funny people making prank phone calls, a business broadcasting video of their renovation, and then there was Sheena Melwani.

Sheena Melwani is a beautiful young singer from Hawaii that lived in Tokyo. She has a voice to die for and her looks don’t hurt either. Live Yahoo! featured her on the home page and she quickly gained followers because of her talents. Her broadcasts were on a set schedule three nights a week and I looked forward to every one of those nights, but I’m not sure if my wife did.

Viewers can chat with each other and the broadcaster can comment if they want, and Sheena did it better than anyone. She would take song requests, answer questions, have conversations, remember visitors’ nicknames from previous visits, and make relationships. She was still having conversations with viewers after a performance one night, and I suggested she buy a domain name (sheenamelwani.tv) before anyone else did, and helped walked her through the steps. From then on whenever she saw my nickname join the chat conversation, she said “Hi Kevin!” in front of thousands of viewers, asked about my wife and made me feel like we were friends.

Her new fans were encouraged to subscribe to Sheena’s Youtube page and she soon had tens of thousands of subscribers and even more views of each Youtube video. Sheena used her new found Internet fame from the live video website, to become famous on a pre-recorded video website (Youtube.) Many famous Youtube musicians have gone on to get record contracts and tour around the world, and now she is in the studio recording her first album . . .  all with the power of live internet video.

So you’re not hot, young, interesting, funny or a talented singer? Or you have no desire to promote yourself? Well, let’s talk about your business or the company you work for. We’ll brainstorm about how businesses can use live video on the Internet in the future . . . I have a lot of ideas, but you can always contact me because I can’t give away the farm.

p.s. After writing this post I checked out Sheena’s website for the first time in a year, and she is using sheenamelwani.tv (my idea) to forward to her Stickam.com live video page. She has over 200,000 live views using my domain name suggestion.  I can’t give these brilliant ideas away for free anymore folks.