There’s just no denying that YouTube has been a phenomenal success online. Although many members of the YouTube community feared that being bought out by Google back in 2006 would “ruin the YouTube experience,” by and large, Google has been good for YouTube, and the online video site has continued to flourish.
The fears that Google would “over commercialize” YouTube have been largely unfounded. It is true that YouTube now features more online advertising than before, but mostly those ads are unobtrusive, and do little to diminish the experience of watching videos on the site.
But the question for many dedicated Web watchers is now, “where does YouTube go from here.” In the online world — just as in the off-line world — you’re either growing or dying, so it is critical for even phenomenal success stories like YouTube to expand into new markets, and adopt new technologies to constantly improve the end-users experience on the site.
With that in mind, there had been rumors for some time that Google has been experimenting with adding a type of live streaming video to YouTube. The site’s cofounder Steve Chen indicated an interest in adding live video as far back as 2005, though he admitted at that time the company simply lacked the resources (read: money) to make it happen.
But Google’s acquisition of YouTube in 2006 gave the site a firm foundation and nearly unlimited resources to experiment with new technologies. In a recent interview, Chen was quoted as saying, “… we’ve never had the resources to do it [live video] correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually launch something this year.”
So it appears that the many rumors circulating about YouTube 2.0 featuring live streaming video were correct after all. But how will this change or (hopefully) improve YouTube? Actually, it could have a greater impact on the future of Internet entertainment than any of us realize at the moment.
Live video has traditionally been the domain of broadcast television networks. If Google can create a viable system to broadcast live video via YouTube, it will effectively create a massive online broadcast network like nothing the Web has seen before, and it will undoubtedly blur the already murky line between Internet and television entertainment.
Of course, live streaming video online is not a new idea — Yahoo, Ustream and Justin.tv have all experimented with live video, for example. But none of those sites have been particularly successful in applying the technology. Overall, they lacked the resources, infrastructure and money to develop user-friendly live video on a large-scale.
Google, on the other hand, has no shortage of resources, infrastructure and financial wherewithal. If anyone has the capability of perfecting live online broadcasting, it is surely Google. Look for YouTube to begin featuring a beta live video section later this year.
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