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Who is winning the race to become the top site for live Web video? A quick check on Google Trends for Websites and comScore suggests that over the past four months Justin.tv is pulling ahead of the pack. According to Google Trends, Justin.tv is attracting more than 300,000 unique visitors a day, compared to only about 60,000 for both Stickam.com and Ustream.tv. Comscore measures visitors on a monthly basis, but shows a similar relative breakdown, with Justin.tv pulling in 1.9 million monthly uniques worldwide versus 860,000 for Stickam, 790,000 for Ustream.tv, and 440,000 for Mogulus. (See chart below).

Both of these measure only the traffic to the main Websites of each competing live Web video service, and do not include how many people watch the videos in embeddable players elsewhere on the Web. But they are apples-to-apples and should give a good indication of the overall trend.

Ustream.tv, at least, realizes it needs to change something in order to catch up. Today it launched a redesign of its site, which gives DIY broadcasters the ability to add text and graphic overlays to their videos and better metrics on how many people are watching their videos. Also, viewers can now subscribe to specific broadcasters. The company claims 10 million unique viewers overall for the month of June, including videos watched offsite. It has 410,000 registered users. 100,000 of them are active and are broadcasting 10,000 to 15,000 live events a day Some of its better known users include Johnny Knoxville, Dane Cook, James Blunt, The Plain White Ts, and both Presidential campaigns. Steve Gillmor, the editor of TechCrunchIT, uses it as well for his NewsGang Live show.

But that right there might just be the problem. Would you rather watch Steve Gillmor talking with his wife about Twitter on a split screen while her cat climbs the couch in the background (this is actually on right now), or French cowgirls in bikinis on Justin.tv? No offense, Steve, but the featured live streams on Justin.tv just seem younger and more fun than the stuff on Ustream.tv.

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It’s been a whole year since the launch of live video streaming site Justin.TV , and there is no shortage of competitors (Ustream, BlogTV, Kyte, Stickam, Mogulus, Yahoo Live, LiveVideo). (See more of our coverage here). But Justin.TV looks like it is holding its own in this still-nascent part of the Web. “So far,,” notes CEO Michael Seibel, “Justin.tv has more than 50 years of video stored in its archives and we have accumulated 10 of those years over the past 30 days.”

Here are some more stats provided by the company, both cumulative for the past year and for the past 30 days:

1 Year Statistics:

* 87,331,037 pageviews
* 24,954,403 unique visitors
* 57 years of archives
* 28,106 total channels
* 356,197 registered users
* 73,754 user created video clips

Last 30 day stats

* 21,409,755 pageviews
* 5,963,775 uniques
* 11 years of archives
* 6,954 new channels
* 73,534 registered users
* 26,500 user created video clips

Peaks:

* 3.6 gbps video
* 32,000 simultaneous viewers

Update 2: Justin.TV reviewed its stats, and believes that its website analytics software, StatCounter, overcounts unique visitors. So it has provided the following data from Google Analytics, which vastly diminishes its unique visitor count in the past 30 days from 6 million to 1.6 million. This is really lame, but at least they fessed up. And this is why I always try to go with comScore—better to undercount than overcount.

1 Year Statistics:
85,335,630 pageviews
4,823,411 absolute unique visitors

Last 30 day stats:
21,859,147 pageviews
1,560,112 absolute unique visitors

Update: Here is a graph from Justin.TV, of only its site’s pageviews, unique visitors, and returning visitors (worldwide):

Here are the comScore stats for the site alone. (Justin.TV is the red line). Note that these tell a very different story, with only 293,000 uniques in February (compared to the 6 million—(update) make that 1.6 million— claimed by the company). These are all U.S. stats, but the trends roughly match the worldwide stats from comScore as well. I present them here only to give a sense of how it is doing as a destination site versus some of its competitors. (Here is Alexa and Compete). As a destination site, it looks to be doing better than UStream and BlogTV:

But not quite as well as Kyte.TV or StickCam (although the numbers are so low for all of these sites, that it is still anybody’s game):

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First rumored in January, YouTube is definitely doing live video, and it’s happening this year.

Sarah Meyers got the scoop (video above), transcript as follows care of NewTeeVee:

Meyers: “When are you guys gonna do live video on YouTube?”

Chen: “2008. We’ll do it this year.

“Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do, we’ve never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually do it this year.”

Now for the guessing game: which live video startup will fold first once YouTube dominates the market? YouTube will be last to market, but the same momentum that has seen YouTube dominate video will now be applied to live video. Like video, content creators want to be on the service that gives them the most exposure, no matter how good the alternatives area (after all, YouTube doesn’t offer the best quality video). YouTube already has the user base; live video streamers will flock to YouTube like a moth to a flame.

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If you ever considered yourself a Marv Albert or John Madden in training, YouCastr is the place for you. The site just launched out of a quiet beta. It’s kind of like Ustream or Justin.tv for sports commentary. The site lets anyone stream live broadcasts of game commentary or cut random rants in archived podcasts. Listeners can tune into commentary covering the latest sports games and chat live or leave comments. Here’s an example of a good podcast.

While I’m not quite ready to turn down the volume on my TV to hear Joe Schmo’s coverage of the Superbowl, a place for sports fans to post sports rants for later listening has promise. There’s already a vibrant community of sports bloggers covering news and even live blogging games. These same bloggers would probably love to easily make audio broadcasts like the best of them. YouCastr makes that easy.

With the entry of Yahoo into the live video category and Ustream acquisition rumors, there’s a lot of interest in the live format. YouCastr’s focus on sports strikes me as a good way to inject a sense of purpose and consistency missing from some lifecasting sites. When you go on Justin.tv, you don’t always know what you’re going to get, but YouCastr will always give you something sports related.

YouCastr was built over the past year by a team of four and is funded in the mid six figures by a team of angels.

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Live streaming video service BlogTV is now offering its live shows on mobile phones.

The new mobile site from BlogTV m.blogtv.com offers live streaming to most mobile phones without the need for a plugin (I’m presuming it’s flash based, because it doesn’t work on my iPhone.)

BlogTV claims that their mobile streaming services is the first of its type available for mobile phones. The mobile version includes the host stream, cohost and chat feed, fully replicating the normal BlogTV experience.

Mobile services such as this do rely on decent data plans that aren’t always available everywhere, but in the ongoing battle of live streaming supremacy, it’s another positive addition from BlogTV following their ICQ deal January 30.

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I had the opportunity to spend some time with Sarah Meyers of PopSnap this week. Sarah was in town to do the videos for the Crunchies, and I had to drive her up to the award ceremony Friday. On many levels she’s inspiring, particularly given that someone so relatively young can make a decent living out of video blogging, and can afford to live in New York.

We just happened to discuss the topic of life streaming. I mentioned Robert Scoble live Twittering the birth of his son and how I believed that it was a step too far, that ultimately some things should remain private. It’s hard to describe her reaction in words, but the look of horror at the suggestion was something I’ll remember for years. She told me that life streaming should include everything, and that Scoble did the right thing.

On a related note I read Ben Elton’s latest novel Blind Faith on the way to the States, and it’s all about life streaming (note that it’s not available in the US until June). To quote Amazon on the book:

Imagine a world where everyone knows everything about everybody. Where what a person “feels” and “truly believes” is protected under the law, while what is rational, even provable is condemned as heresy. A world where to question ignorance and intolerance is to commit a Crime against Faith.

Imagine it. Or just wait until After The Flood.

On a hot Sagittarian morning in the year 56 ATF, Trafford Sewell struggles to work through the usual crowds of near-naked commuters. He is confronted by the intimidating figure of his Parish Confessor. Why has Trafford not been streaming his every moment of sexual intimacy onto the community website like everybody else? Does he think he’s different or special in some way? Better than his fellow man and woman? Does he have something to hide?

Ben Elton imagines a post-apocalyptic society where religious intolerance combines with a confessional sex-obsessed, self-centric culture to create a world where nakedness is modesty, ignorance is wisdom and privacy is a dangerous perversion. A chilling vision of what’s to come? Or something rather closer to what we call reality?

It’s a challenging book, perhaps in line with Keensian thinking (as in Andrew Keen). But intellectually it raises very good questions about privacy and where we draw the line on what we share online, and in those terms I’d highly recommend reading it.

I still believe that some things should remain private. I’ve embraced Twitter in a big way, and I constantly update it, but most of what goes on in my family life remains private. Blogging even more so, it’s not as immediate as Twitter anyway. A visit to Justin.tv in particular shows people streaming their lives 24/7 and while I can see some appeal in doing a show, the thought that my every move may be watched sickens me.

We can’t do a multi-stage survey using our voting plugin for WordPress, so I’ve split the options into age categories. My hunch is that younger people (Gen Y and the new Gen Z) are more open to complete life streaming than those in Gen X and older. There is a heavier level of cynicism amongst the younger generation, a cynicism that seems to dictate that live and unedited is ultimately the only truth as opposed to the heavily slanted, and edited main stream media.

Leave a comment or vote below, it will be interesting to see what others think. If you disagree with me so be it, Sarah Meyers proved to me that some people believe there isn’t a line.

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If there was one defining breakthrough in 2007 as opposed to the year before, it was live video. From Justin.tv through to the gauntlet of clones live video made its presence felt, even if it’s not dominate today.

Ustream.tv remains one of my favorite services. It doesn’t have the cool tech Kyte has, or perhaps the wider presence of Justin.tv, but it’s reliable, and it usually delivers. I regularly tune in to Chris Pirillo live, it’s an informative program where you learn stuff as well. Today (my time) I spent some time listening to The Drill Down, where I ended up getting exclusive news of the Digg girl and a possible record contract; it was a good example of where Podcasting meets live TV, a positive from the new wave of live content.

And then there was Jim Choma. I just happened to be on Ustream after the Drill Down podcast and saw him live, and that’s where the fun began. Jim runs sites including Zipperfish.com, he also hosts a live show on Ustream under the name of “The Walrus.” Jim likes a drink, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we don’t normally stream the experience, complete with homophobia, swearing and nakedness. Once I Twittered the link his drinking session went from 30 viewers to over 100, and it went down hill from there, complete with a call in from me (the show is focused on live call ins) asking him how much he had to drink. Some short video I caught above and below. It was train wreck TV at its worst or perhaps best, but we were all compelled to watch it. If Jim had any career before it must surely join the deadpool now, or maybe not, after all drunk TV had some value tonight, at least from me and 100 others. Either way if the full Ustream clip gets released I’m betting this might well be the last great viral video of 2007.

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We’ve been following the evolving live streaming space for some time now. The success of recorded social video on the net (read YouTube acquisition) spurred on many more video startups, including a host of video sites hoping to find an equally large demand for live content. There are a bunch of them out there, including Ustream.tv, Stickam, Blogtv.com, Operator11, Mogulus, Veodia, and Justin.tv.

Justin.tv, the first mobile lifecasting site, remained closed over the past couple of months as they experimented with the model. Today they’ve finally opened the site to anyone and partnered with On2 technologies for improved video compression. The new codec is supposed to deliver superior performance that yields higher quality video on a lower quality connection. On2’s benchmarks say their codec has a 30% performance improvement over the Sorenson video codec (commonly used in Flash and Quicktime) and it looks like Justin.tv’s streams are benefiting from it.

So why the wait? Justin.tv originally started with a rather elaborate lifecasting model where anyone could stream their life on the go with a webcam and a laptop in their backpack. It did a great job of getting them a lot of press and into a great deal of mischief, but the hardware turned out to be too costly for the average user.

Since then, the model has switched into kind of a MySpace for video casters. The site features an Apple “coverflow-style” directory of all the casters and list of top clips. Each caster gets an individually-stylized channel page with their own live cast, chat room, profile, twitter, and top highlights. They’ve also started adding professional content, like a behind the scenes cast of “One Tree Hill”. Viewers play judge and jury of the video streams, voting content for the clips they like to the front page of the site and casters seem happy to play along.

As I’ve said before, I think the live streaming model has a lot of growing up to do before we see any stand out successes. There are several hurdles to mass consumption of the medium. User generated content is often not of the highest quality. Also, live streaming doesn’t lend itself to the same embeddable distribution model that made YouTube so successful since you don’t know what live content will show up (most sites have since tied in recorded video clips). Live streaming does shine when it comes to user interaction, which has led many startups to focus on shows and events. Ustream has embraced the tech community with a host of shows and event casts. While not “live” video, Kyte.tv’s community around recently-live video is another strategy. However, Stickam, which launched in 2005, also has a MySpace look and feel and appears to be flat yet leading the pack according to Compete and Alexa. We have yet to see whether an open Justin.tv will have more success with the model.

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If you find yourself bored this morning - incredibly, mind numbingly bored out of your mind - you may want to drop on over to Justin.tv and watch the show’s creator, Justin, hanging out with one of the other stars of the show, the Naked Cowboy in what can only be described as a cry for media attention. Like the Naked Cowboy, Justin will be wearing nothing but briefs, shoes and his hat. And they’ll be hanging out in Times Square, where the Naked Cowboy plays his guitar every day.

The stream will be live on both channels, so you’ll be able to see both men in all their glory if you switch back and forth (Naked Cowboy will be looking at Justin, and vice versa). The fun starts at 10 AM PST.

Look for an announcement soon by Justin.tv to open up to all who want their very own 24/7 video channel. UStream already does this. More competitors are here, but due to brilliant PR stunts like the one this morning, Justin.tv seems to get all the attention.

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Justin.tv launched a week ago, and is rising steadily in popularity. It’s a simple idea - the site shows live video of Justin, who lives in San Francisco with his buddies and spends his time meeting with local startups and personalities. At any given time hundreds of people are watching and chatting real time on the site. Just this moment, at 2:46 AM PST, 126 people are watching Justin sleep.

Ustream.tv, a service that let’s anyone create their own 24/7 web cam show, is capitalizing on a ton of press around Justin.tv and launching way earlier than expected. That may or may not be a good thing - I discovered a lot of bugs while trying out the service, and it really detracted from the overall experience. Ustream also needs a basic “how to” guide for new broadcasters - suggested equipment, and a step-by-step process for launching their show.

The basic Ustream service is free, and anyone with a computer, an Internet connection and a web cam can set up their own channel and broadcast live. Viewers can watch on the site, or embed the live video onto any other website.

So far Ustream is a poor version of Stickam, which has great tools for people who want to broadcast their own live web shows (and build a social network around them). Ustream is targeting users who want to carry a camera around with them all the time, though, and like Justin.tv they are allowing users to put up a calendar with their upcoming activities.

Meanwhile, the Justin.tv guys have already built a robust platform that’s handling quite a bit of traffic already. It would not be difficult for them to launch a platform for others to host their own shows, too. They haven’t indicated that they intend to do that, but my guess is they’ll keep an eye on Ustream to see if this takes off. Like most things, there’s a novelty factor - future shows will have to have very talented hosts if they hope to build an audience.

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