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Analysis: YouTube Live - A Successful Experiment

Authored by Jay Baage on November 24, 2008 - 1:39pm.

Youtube’s (NASD: GOOG) first live streaming video event, YouTube Live, took place on Saturday night and featured some 50 YouTube and real world personalities (including Bo Burnham in the video above – remember where you first read about him?). So how did it go? Well, the show had about 700,000 simultaneous viewers at the peak of the event, according to NewTeeVee, and clips from YouTube Live have been viewed an additional 2,5 million times in the immediate 24 hours afterwards (compared to, for example, the 2008 edition of Live Earth which saw simultaneous online views peak at about 287,000, according to Cynopsis Digital). Those are not the kind of numbers that would make for a successful show on network television, but that is not the point. YouTube proved it can do both original programming and live “appointment” video as well as sell sponsorships to support it. So should it continue to do similar events? Without a doubt - yes. YouTube Live was both a great promotional event for the service, a clever way to engage the community and produce original content for the site. If Hulu’s strength and competitive advantage is its access to full-length, professionally produced and fully licensed television and film content, then I believe that YouTube should really look for more clever ways like this to engage the community and leverage the unique pop-culture phenomenon that it has become.
tags: Video | Marketing | TV | YouTube | Events | Hulu | YouTube Live |



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