Miley Cyrus alone in heavy Facebook streaming

September 29, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments |
|

fb_miley2It’s been a couple of months since Facebook launched its streaming video pages powered by Ustream. Is it catching on? TechCrunch used the feature to simulcast the TechCrunch50 event week before last. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg used it to stream a speaking appearance in Brazil. Reggae singer Matisyahu did a show from Twitter’s office.

Ustream’s aggressive (in a good way) marketing department called yesterday to let me know that Facebook streamers have racked up 4 million viewers and 6 million hours of total watching. That sounds like a lot, but Facebook has 300 million members. Four million streaming video watchers means that barely more than one percent of Facebook’s users have checked out a live stream in the past eight weeks.

Rather than argue over stats, I asked Ustream to give me a list of all the other celebrities who’ve streamed through Facebook via Ustream’s tech. Here’s a simplified version of their reply:

  • Miley Cyrus
  • Mitchel Musso
  • Mountain Dew
  • Jonas Brothers
  • Ashton Kutcher
  • Selena Gomez
  • Demi Lovato
  • Honors Society
  • Ashley Tisdale
  • Reba McEntire
  • Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag
  • Diddy’s White Party
  • Lance Armstrong

Most marketers would kill to have this list to wave around. But Ustream seems to have a few superstars with a lot of silence in between them. At this point, Ustream still builds the Facebook pages for each celebrity or brand, so the technology isn’t as instantly scalable as YouTube.

But I’m also beginning to develop a theory that live video is a bad idea on the Internet. There are a small number of events the world wants to watch together — World Cup soccer, the State of the Union address — but most video events are better chopped down to easily-digested pieces and uploaded as clips rather than a live stream. We want our online video on demand.

Next Story:
Previous Story:

Email
Print
Bookmark
Google
Delicious
Facebook
Twitter
StumbleUpon
MySpace
Digg
Live
More…

Tags: ,

Photo of Paul Boutin

About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • robertblanchard
    Hmm, not sure I agree, I dont think Ustream is trying to be the next Fox, CBS, or youtube in the sense that they are looking for a single mega hit audience. They seem to be settling into the role of giving the millions of other events that are happening in the world today coverage that will never get beyound a thirty second sound byte on the traditional networks (if at all). An event may only draw a few thousand veiwers but that may be the only way those individuals can participate live then you have a distinct targeted audience, especially Ustream gets to the point where there are tens of thousands of broadcasts daily. That could add up to a lot of interested total veiwers..
  • robertblanchard
    True and think if marketers didnt have to spend millions flooding cable tv, traditional broadcast mediums, etc.. just to reach the few that might actually be interested. E.g. I might rather spend my advertising budget on a streamed golf equipment convention that I know will only be watched by those really interested in the sport..
  • Gerad Gomez
    Totally agree Robert.
  • miley i love you i need see you i need see you i love miley cyrus miley i need call
blog comments powered by Disqus