Live-Stream; Find out how it all began and why it came to be?
Experience the fascinating technological and ethical development.
Live streaming platforms, as we know now, is a result of years of technological advancements and cut-throat competitions. The development for over two decades and continuous struggle by top companies of the world to acquire their fair share of the booming market of live-streaming platforms resulted in this billion-dollar industry that is now integrated with the human society.
Many companies were created from scratch, and they saw immense growth while at the same time, many suffered devastating losses due to competition with rival companies. What came from the incidents is a networking platform that is refined to meet the users and audience expectations and brought the world one step closer to each other.
Live stream
Founded in 2007 as Mogulas, Livestream was an excellent platform for live interaction with the audience; this streaming platform was designed with the sole aspect of audience interaction. It simplified the live streaming interface, making broadcasting more effortless than ever with a built-in chat system and availability in all devices from IOS, Android, and Roku Inc. The platform was readily available and widely popular for its time; with Vimeo’s partnership on September 26, 2017, it developed further and was renamed Vimeo Livestream.
The OG of live streaming-Ustream and It’s the dissolution into the IBM.
Ustream had a long legacy of acting as an informal platform for people to interact with the entire world; after dominating the live streaming sector for over a decade, Ustream, the face of the live streaming platform in the whole world was dissolved into IBM in 2016. The American live streaming company, which was widely popular and diversely used by famous politicians and celebrities, was acquired by IBM, an American multinational technological company, for the US $150 million. To contemplate its acquisition on April 1, 2018, two years after its purchase, Ustream officially changed its name to IBM cloud videos.
The newly formed cloud video service was a well thought out and executed business decision. IBM had a vision and approach in mind on developing a system that targets the corporate sector.
IBM had already envisioned the future aspects of the corporate world and how it will need a secure and reliable live streaming platform for conducting various conferences and corporate meetings. With this mindset, the new cloud service was developed with the sole focus to win over the entire corporate market share of live streaming systems on its side; since no other platform was available at this time or was under development, the strategy was clear.
The advent of Youtube Livestream.
YouTube has been the face of video streaming on the internet and had dominated the market since its establishment on feb14 2005.
This California based American company founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, Jawed Karim, was so influential that it bought about video sharing market on the face of world economies.
With the declaration to begin the live streaming application in April 2011, it has already taken the next big step to dominate the entire streaming platform altogether.
Anyone with the app in your smartphone or tablet or any computing device with a camera setup can go live by just creating a user account, with the option to monetize and chat services. The interaction with the audience is built to be seamless and reliable.
Twitch-
Twitch was introduced as a spinoff of a streaming platform Justin.tv in June 2011 by Justin Kan and Emmett Shear, with the main focus on video game live streaming and esports broadcasting.
AMAZON later acquired twitch for US$970 million, creating and hence acts as a subsidiary of Amazon. The platform, with the advent of the gaming industry, saw rapid growth from October 2013 to February 2014 with 45 million viewers. The interface and the server are highly optimized for real-time game streaming, and it has been the face of streaming games since its creation.
Facebook live-
California based American online social media/networking based company has been the Meta of social interaction and the face of the internet since its launch.
And with the introduction to the Facebook live system in April of 2016, Facebook has grasped the essence of its creation of bringing people together from all over the world.
With a coherent user interface and free to use simple mechanism, the system was widely popular for live streaming informal events and occasions and was widely adored by celebrities. It allowed a simple means of interaction with their followers, as most of them were already on Facebook.
Case study of ‘Periscope’ and ‘Meerkat.’
Periscope is an American live video streaming app for Android and IOS devices developed by Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein. Twitter later acquired the company before its launch in 2015, the app after its launch, gained over 10 million users in the same year of its launch and was also mentioned as the iPhone app of the year later on December 2015.
The app allowed the user the flexibility to stream for the entire public or only for a selected group of peoples with a simple audience interaction system. The app gained immense popularity in a short period.
Meerkat is yet another great live streaming platform that was the main competitor of the Periscope. Meerkat, developed by Life On Air, Inc., a team headed by founder and CEO Ben Rubin, was very popular since its launch in February 2015. Meerkat lacks the replay option, but it allows the user to connect to their Facebook or Twitter accounts, which enables them to stream directly through their accounts. The app was available for both iOS and Android.
Both Periscope and Meerkat saw rapid growth in their sales despite being each other’s toughest competition. It forced them to improve at a very rapid rate just to exist and be a part of the massive market share of live streaming platforms.
The Unsuccessful attempt- ‘BLAB.’
‘Blab’ by Bebo. A social networking website is another interesting means of live communication, and often, very few people know about it. This platform allows viewers to view communication between other people in real-time. The concept of it was to bring about individuals together to chat and have a good time.
So if you like talk shows, the platform was made for you. The website was launched in 2005 and went bankrupt in 2013. Even after subsequent launches with several short-lived offerings, including instant messaging and streaming, it failed to gain any profit. It was finally shut in July 2019 when amazon acquired blab.
Conclusion-
With the advent of the internet, the world came closer to each other than ever before. Live streaming was just another big step towards the movement; many companies believed in this potential market and invested in it; many missed the opportunity. Today’s live streaming platform is a result of these struggles and endeavors, and it bought about an imminent change in the world of the internet.
