Mio Babic

YouTube's Live Event: As Overhyped as the Company

It’s great to see someone like YouTube with large audience decides and actually does the live webcast. Although this appears to be purely a test and not monetization play, if numbers portrayed are accurate, it shows a value of live streaming versus staged and always available video on-demand. Without a doubt there is always a level or uncertainty with audience size and ability to deliver content to large flash crowds, if they do materialize. When planning for live events content owners, in particular those who have never done this before, tend to overestimate their numbers simply because they don’t understand or don’t have data or experience that could indicate more realistic traffic. If flash crowds do materialize, there are only a few players that can handle those and they are all true CDNs with traditional CDN offerings, including Akamai and Limelight. Other folks referenced in the article are service providers (encoding, etc..) and not networks that actually deliver bits. Perhaps a clear and concise statement from YouTube outlining objectives (promotion and/or monetization) with audience size and maybe average viewing time would be appropriate. Nonetheless, it would certainly give sense to other content owners and industry on what type of success can be generated by someone who does have large audience -- at least for its core offering.