Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says they might
Speaker 1: be better off. I think the way it seems to
Speaker 1: me making up their own shows, which might be better
Speaker 1: than TV. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: our other regular host, Lauren Boge. Obama is not with
Speaker 1: us today because she is off. What's she doing. I
Speaker 1: think she is walking on the surface of Jupiter's moon
Speaker 1: Europa today. Yeah, she is unavailable, but she did submit
Speaker 1: some information that we will be covering in today's episode.
Speaker 1: It's really too bad that she's all the way out
Speaker 1: in Europa because there's no WiFi there and if she,
Speaker 1: if she had WiFi, she could live cast into this
Speaker 1: podcast and then we'd still have her here. She could
Speaker 1: like periscope from up there. Except to guess, there would
Speaker 1: probably be a very long delay, A significant delay. Yes,
Speaker 1: so maybe more than twenty minutes. I don't know how
Speaker 1: long exactly it would be. It would be pretty long,
Speaker 1: and so you wouldn't get your comments answered. It would
Speaker 1: be a pretty crappy live stream. Let's be Frank, she
Speaker 1: would be constantly interrupting us with with things that are
Speaker 1: twenty minutes out of out of alignment with the rest
Speaker 1: of the show. So we're gonna talk today about live
Speaker 1: casting or live streaming because it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that has become increasingly more popular. Uh, I'd say really
Speaker 1: over the last year, in particular as it's as it's
Speaker 1: taken over mobile platforms. Yeah, and you might be able
Speaker 1: to debate why exactly it has become so popular, like
Speaker 1: is this an organic popularity that comes out of people's
Speaker 1: desire to see live things happening over the internet, or
Speaker 1: is it a sort of top down popularity because it's
Speaker 1: being promoted by the platforms on which it happened. And
Speaker 1: it may very well be a combination of the two.
Speaker 1: You'll just have to listen and to hear what we think.
Speaker 1: But I guess we need to define what this is.
Speaker 1: And really it's all in the name. It's broadcasting, right,
Speaker 1: live casting or live streaming. Either way, it's about using
Speaker 1: some service or app or whatever in order to stream
Speaker 1: live video and audio from a device up to the
Speaker 1: Internet and then down to an audiences group of devices
Speaker 1: and whatever they may be. Yeah, and there are actually
Speaker 1: a lot of tools out there to do this today. Now,
Speaker 1: we actually have talked about this on the podcast before,
Speaker 1: but this is one area where I feel like there
Speaker 1: has been significant growth since the last time we talked
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, the episode we did was back in
Speaker 1: May of My So called Life casting Who came up
Speaker 1: with that title? Always a good question, it's an excellent
Speaker 1: well it since it's three years ago, I'm not entirely sure. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's possible it was me, but I don't know. I
Speaker 1: definitely was aware of my so called life and watched
Speaker 1: all of it. Now, why does she go with him?
Speaker 1: I mean she didn't have to or never mind, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna it's the perennial question people have been asking
Speaker 1: since Little Women. Yeah, that's true, exactly before before MTV. Okay,
Speaker 1: but anyway, So we talked about some things. We talked
Speaker 1: about Google glass and apparently we talked about the word
Speaker 1: vlog too much tittering and amusement. Yeah, we talked a
Speaker 1: lot about stuff that is uh is quaint today just
Speaker 1: just a mirror three years later. I think the idea
Speaker 1: back then was we were talking about the question of
Speaker 1: of recording our whole lives well. And we also talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about broadcasting, because we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about things like justin TV and that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: that the platforms that were out there that allow people
Speaker 1: to kind of turn their lives into a reality television
Speaker 1: show or the equivalent thereof. But back then, which is
Speaker 1: weird to say for something that was only three years ago,
Speaker 1: primarily you did that through a desktop or laptop computer
Speaker 1: that had a webcam and a microphone. Right. You didn't
Speaker 1: really have a an easy way to do that in
Speaker 1: a mobile application for a couple of different reasons. I mean,
Speaker 1: you had to have the right camera quality, microphone quality,
Speaker 1: you had to have the right U upload bit rate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a big one. Was waiting for the cellular
Speaker 1: and WiFi businesses to get to a point where you
Speaker 1: would have the throughput to upload live video a stream
Speaker 1: of live video, and also to be able to consume
Speaker 1: that live video. But we've gotten to that point now,
Speaker 1: and I would say that the mobile approach has has
Speaker 1: really pushed this live experience thing um much more into
Speaker 1: the public thought than it had been three years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would agree with that, and I would also say
Speaker 1: that if you go with certain models of live casting,
Speaker 1: because we can talk about the different ways the the
Speaker 1: live casters have approached to this. If you go with
Speaker 1: the model that was envisioned by, say, the founder of Periscope,
Speaker 1: the mobile aspect is especially important. Yes, yeah, and uh
Speaker 1: and so, and in fact, there are certain ones like
Speaker 1: Periscope where if you aren't on a mobile platform you
Speaker 1: have a severe disadvantage on the service. Like you can
Speaker 1: watch a Periscope livestream on a desktop computer, but when
Speaker 1: it comes to things like commenting and that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: you need to be on the mobile app in order
Speaker 1: to have that kind of experience. Yeah, now we probably
Speaker 1: don't need to explain this to you, but just to
Speaker 1: briefly map the ground on which we stand. It is
Speaker 1: not a recent thing being able to broadcast video live.
Speaker 1: This is something that goes way back to you know,
Speaker 1: live live news program really goes back to the birth
Speaker 1: of television, because when TV first started, it was cheaper
Speaker 1: to to just broadcast than it was to try and
Speaker 1: store things on a medium, and so it made way
Speaker 1: more sense that television was just this kind of uh,
Speaker 1: ephemeral thing that if you weren't there to if you
Speaker 1: weren't there to witness it. You missed it her kids,
Speaker 1: Here's a very slow and awkward puppet show. Yeah, seriously,
Speaker 1: there's a great there's a great sequence of skits on
Speaker 1: uh and I talked about the show all the time.
Speaker 1: But that Mitchell and web look which British sketch show
Speaker 1: where they they do this whole thing where it's the
Speaker 1: birth of television and everyone is incredibly awkward, and they say,
Speaker 1: it's so early now, we aren't even certain if we
Speaker 1: should be facing you or in profile. So for the
Speaker 1: rest of this I will be facing to my left
Speaker 1: and he just turns and and then they told us
Speaker 1: we we I know that you can hear us, but
Speaker 1: we don't yet know if we can hear you. So
Speaker 1: if you could shout I hear you when I say this,
Speaker 1: that would be very helpful. And he says, hello, oh
Speaker 1: I heard that. Oh wait, that's just the set in
Speaker 1: the next room. So this whole idea that TV is
Speaker 1: so new that they don't even know how to use
Speaker 1: it yet. Well, in the way we're kind of in
Speaker 1: that with the lives streaming on the internet. Despite the
Speaker 1: fact that we've been dealing with live broadcast a video
Speaker 1: for quite some time, yeah. But of course, the this
Speaker 1: goes on into the age where most programs are taped
Speaker 1: ahead of time, and even a lot of times you
Speaker 1: have the semi live situations right where something is sort
Speaker 1: of live but on a maybe very brief delay. Seven
Speaker 1: second delay is the standard you hear bandied about. That's
Speaker 1: that's there in case something unexpected happens, in case one
Speaker 1: of the newscasters gets a little wild, right, or or
Speaker 1: or something like if it's an anchor who's out there
Speaker 1: on a live report, if something happens in the frame
Speaker 1: that they feel is not something that they want to broadcast,
Speaker 1: they'll interrupted and come back. That kind of thing. It's
Speaker 1: a a protective measure. But let's talk about how the
Speaker 1: transition over into the digital version of live casting and
Speaker 1: live streaming, how that's had a big advantage over the
Speaker 1: traditional media, the television and radio, which you know that
Speaker 1: that's set the standard or live broadcast. Well, one obvious
Speaker 1: advantage is going to be accessibility. You and I do
Speaker 1: not have the equipment to live broadcast on television because
Speaker 1: we do not have a television station and and antenna
Speaker 1: and all those things we would need. But it turns
Speaker 1: out these days if you have a smartphone, you can
Speaker 1: broadcast on the internet. Yeah. Yeah, if you have either
Speaker 1: a computer with that webcam and microphone and an Internet connection,
Speaker 1: or just a smartphone, you can walk around and and
Speaker 1: carry with you a live broadcast studio. But I must say,
Speaker 1: even even today, wouldn't it be really cool to have
Speaker 1: a television broadcast van. Yeah no, I mean I've seen
Speaker 1: one parked in front of my house a couple of times.
Speaker 1: I guess it's just an area where they like to
Speaker 1: report about. Across the street from me, there's a train
Speaker 1: yard where often they shoot a lot of I know
Speaker 1: exactly what you're talking about. I walked past that with
Speaker 1: my dog. Yeah, so that train yard ends up being
Speaker 1: a movie set, movie product and said a lot. So
Speaker 1: I see these and every time I see when, I
Speaker 1: think I'd like I'd like to have one of those.
Speaker 1: But but not having one. But having a smartphone that's
Speaker 1: capable of broadcasting live video is pretty cool, especially since
Speaker 1: I can reach people I know. And in fact, this
Speaker 1: is another big advantage that live streaming on digital has
Speaker 1: over traditional media. Traditional media like that that sketch I
Speaker 1: talked about earlier. It's one way communication. Yeah, you say,
Speaker 1: can you hear me, and they actually can say yes,
Speaker 1: we can hear you, because they can comment on the
Speaker 1: video as you're broadcasting. Yeah, almost every live streaming app
Speaker 1: or service out there has some sort of comment or
Speaker 1: chat component to it, So you've got this interactive feature
Speaker 1: that is absent in traditional media, and that's a very
Speaker 1: engaging experience when you are especially if you're a fan
Speaker 1: of somebody and you're watching them live and then you
Speaker 1: get a chance to say something to that person and
Speaker 1: they might react to that. That there's a bit of
Speaker 1: a and a rush that comes along with that. And
Speaker 1: we've seen that just as just we're not celebrities by
Speaker 1: any stretch of the imagination, but I've had experiences where
Speaker 1: I've responded to someone mentioning something online and uh in
Speaker 1: real time and they freak out, which is odd but fun. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the other thing I would say is that I think
Speaker 1: the commenting back and forth aspect, it introduces an element
Speaker 1: of unpredictability and sort of a wild card variation to
Speaker 1: what's going to happen live. So imagine somebody here at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works is doing a live broadcast on something
Speaker 1: they talked about on their podcast that week, and then
Speaker 1: the user says, hey, did you read about this thing
Speaker 1: that's pertinent into what you're talking about? And the host says, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't. And then there's actual constructive back and forth
Speaker 1: going on between content creator and their audience, and they're
Speaker 1: they're learning from one another. It's wonderful. And on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you've got maybe trolls who want to come
Speaker 1: in and say, hey, I don't like your face. You know,
Speaker 1: you're whatever, And they both kind of play on the
Speaker 1: same thing. I mean, obviously one is good and one
Speaker 1: is bad, but both introduce this element of unpredictability. There's
Speaker 1: something real happening right now. Well, yeah, it's it's more
Speaker 1: akin to live theater than it is to your traditional
Speaker 1: television show, right because you've actually got an audience that
Speaker 1: can impact the course of the live event. Are they
Speaker 1: gonna laugh? Are they going to clap? Are they gonna heckle? Right?
Speaker 1: And uh? And that's a lot different than if you're
Speaker 1: just in front of a camera and you know there's
Speaker 1: a crew there that might snicker if you screw up
Speaker 1: or might they do they do every time, every darn time.
Speaker 1: But generally speaking, you don't have that that uh interaction.
Speaker 1: You could have with a live audience. Hey, I've got
Speaker 1: I've got another thing. What do you know? So, if
Speaker 1: you go on TV and you want to broadcast to people,
Speaker 1: there are limits on what you're allowed to do without
Speaker 1: having to pay some hefty fine. Yeah, unless you are
Speaker 1: on like a special cable network. But if you're on
Speaker 1: regular broadcast television, you have to bow to the whims
Speaker 1: of the f c C here in the United States,
Speaker 1: and they set down certain rules and regulations, particularly in
Speaker 1: regards to obscenity, in decency and profanity, So you are
Speaker 1: not allowed to say certain words. I mean, George Carlin
Speaker 1: had the magnificent comedic routine about the seven words you're
Speaker 1: not allowed to say. On television, you can say I'm all.
Speaker 1: On periscope you can. And now there's some platforms out
Speaker 1: there that have specific user agreements that say you will
Speaker 1: not broadcast like a sexual material, that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: on their platforms. They don't want to turn into a
Speaker 1: porn hosting right program, And if you you know, if
Speaker 1: you're using that service, it means that you had to
Speaker 1: agree to their terms of use, which means if you
Speaker 1: break that, if you go and broadcast something that goes
Speaker 1: against their terms of use. You could get banned or whatever,
Speaker 1: or you know, sanctioned in some way. UM. And it's
Speaker 1: not the same as the Feds coming in after you,
Speaker 1: but it it is something that's up to a platform
Speaker 1: by platform, and it's also contingent upon region of broadcast.
Speaker 1: I suppose. Yes, China recently got into the news, and
Speaker 1: by recently, I mean like the last week when we're
Speaker 1: recording the week before we're recording this, um, and the
Speaker 1: news was that the Chinese authorities had decided to ban
Speaker 1: a specific activity being streamed on live video and that
Speaker 1: activity wild be women eating bananas in a suggestive manner.
Speaker 1: This is I support free speech, but that is kind
Speaker 1: of a weird thing to stream. Yeah it well, I agree,
Speaker 1: it's a weird thing to stream. It's also a weird
Speaker 1: thing to really hone in on and say you can't
Speaker 1: do that in China. There are a lot of different
Speaker 1: regulations that have been passed recently, UM in regard it's
Speaker 1: to this live streaming service, because it's something that's really
Speaker 1: taking off in China. The Chinese market, of course, is enormous.
Speaker 1: The smartphone market is huge, so there's a lot of
Speaker 1: opportunity there. But The Chinese authorities, in their efforts to
Speaker 1: curtail what they see as being um offensive or unsuitable material,
Speaker 1: has gone on to ban not just that, but also
Speaker 1: things like you aren't allowed to appear on video wearing
Speaker 1: stockings and suspenders. They say, um, yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different things that are tends that tend to be
Speaker 1: identified as being sexually suggestive at least, what I hold on,
Speaker 1: what if you're wearing a Mickey Mouse costume that's got suspenders.
Speaker 1: What are you gonna do now? So why are you
Speaker 1: wearing the stockings? It's stockings and suspenders. I yeah, So
Speaker 1: see there's your problem. Then they say, well, now you've
Speaker 1: you've made Mickey Mouse wear stockings, and that's where we
Speaker 1: draw the line. Um, this is not a Mickey Mouse operation,
Speaker 1: as they would say. Well, apart from regulations being imposed
Speaker 1: from the outside by say government or organizations, there are
Speaker 1: also plenty of technical limitations on what has been possible
Speaker 1: in the past, and to some extent on what is
Speaker 1: still possible with live casting via digital devices right uh now.
Speaker 1: One of the things we mentioned earlier is the bit
Speaker 1: rate problems. I would suggest this is probably much more
Speaker 1: of a problem at the content creators end than the
Speaker 1: consumers end. Right, generally speaking, upload speeds are a tenth
Speaker 1: of what download speeds are, right, and you've got the
Speaker 1: problem there you have. If you have one viewer with
Speaker 1: a bad download speed, it just affects the one viewer.
Speaker 1: If you have one broadcaster with a bad upload speed,
Speaker 1: it affects all viewers. Right. So one way to get
Speaker 1: around that obviously is coming up with new compression strategies
Speaker 1: for video and audio. Right, So if you can come
Speaker 1: up with new ways to compress that live video so
Speaker 1: that it can fit in a smaller package data package
Speaker 1: as you send it up, that speeds things up. And
Speaker 1: then you know, assuming that your audience has the proper
Speaker 1: means of of decompressing that audio and video, which they
Speaker 1: would because they'd have whatever app is relevant to what
Speaker 1: you're using. Uh, everything's cool because then all the work
Speaker 1: is being done by the processors for the compression and decompression.
Speaker 1: But that that's just part of it. Obviously. Another big
Speaker 1: advantage was when we started seeing UH four G and
Speaker 1: better technologies for transmission for cellular data. WiFi obviously also
Speaker 1: has improved in its upload and download speeds. So until
Speaker 1: that happened, it was not really feasible to use devices,
Speaker 1: particularly mobile devices, to broadcast live video. You could more
Speaker 1: easily record a video and then upload it, but obviously
Speaker 1: that would take a lot of time depending on the
Speaker 1: limitations of whatever technology you were using, and at that
Speaker 1: point it's not live casting anymore. Yeah, now these days,
Speaker 1: like I can use and I have, I've used a
Speaker 1: live streaming service. I would specifically used Periscope to live
Speaker 1: cast when I was walking to or from the office,
Speaker 1: just so I could chat with folks, because that's a
Speaker 1: long walk for me, It's like an hour long walk.
Speaker 1: And occasionally I'll just turn what's your data plan? Oh,
Speaker 1: I have unloaded data, so I don't have to Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I didn't have unloaded that's another technical issue, right,
Speaker 1: data caps that really is a big issue both for Actually,
Speaker 1: I would have a more of a problem at home
Speaker 1: using my desktop, which has a data cap attached to
Speaker 1: it because of my home internet service, as opposed to
Speaker 1: using my phone, which has no data cap attached to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little odd, but data caps are another technical
Speaker 1: that's not really a technical uh different challenge. Rather that's
Speaker 1: one that's imposed by It's more kind of like the FCC. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's imposed by I s p s, by Internet service providers,
Speaker 1: but at any rate, Um, I I use this periscope
Speaker 1: while I'm walking. I'm using it on a cellular network,
Speaker 1: but there are sections on my walk where my cellular
Speaker 1: service starts to get a little wishy washy, and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking it must be at a point where there's a
Speaker 1: handshake happening. Handshake is when it's being passed from one
Speaker 1: cellular tower to another. And I have often like there's
Speaker 1: one specific spot on my walk where people are like
Speaker 1: the video has gotten terrible, or I can't hear what
Speaker 1: you're saying, or you're cutting in and out, and it's
Speaker 1: always in the same spot. So so that's where you're
Speaker 1: walking over the ancient cursed graveyards. Yeah, the Indian burial ground, Uh, obvious.
Speaker 1: Weirdly enough, it's actually at the bottom of a hill.
Speaker 1: So it's probably, like I said, right in between two
Speaker 1: cell towers where the handoff is happening the spirit of
Speaker 1: a bunch of prisoners from this former prison colony. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and there are other technical challenges to like, for example,
Speaker 1: the fact that if the service you're relying on ends
Speaker 1: up going down for whatever reason, then you you can
Speaker 1: no longer life cast. Right, So if Twitch were to
Speaker 1: crash for some reason, or if the servers that handle
Speaker 1: the traffic for Periscope or Facebook Live or anything like
Speaker 1: that were to suffer some problems, then that would prevent
Speaker 1: you from being able to live stream or live cast.
Speaker 1: Um And maybe that all the equipments working fine on
Speaker 1: the broadcaster side and on the audience side, but it's
Speaker 1: the stuff in the middle that's screwed up. So that's
Speaker 1: a possibility to well. So let's say you've got all
Speaker 1: that stuff locked down, you say, okay, we we figured
Speaker 1: out how to We've got good hardware, we've got good
Speaker 1: upload and download rates, we can compress videos so that
Speaker 1: it comes through all right and doesn't use too much data.
Speaker 1: But you can still have problems because when you have
Speaker 1: a service that's supposed to provide live video to people,
Speaker 1: the services more than just streaming the data from one
Speaker 1: place to another, Right, it's also stuff like how do
Speaker 1: you get the viewers to the place where they're gonna
Speaker 1: watch it and get them watching something that they want
Speaker 1: to watch. Yeah, there's definite discovery. Discovery is a huge challenge.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's well and that's gonna get harder. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna be talking later in this episode
Speaker 1: about kind of looking forward at live casting, and one
Speaker 1: of the things I would like to to think about
Speaker 1: is um and is live casting just gonna become similar
Speaker 1: to YouTube and that in the early days of YouTube,
Speaker 1: if you had a voice, and you had a really
Speaker 1: distinctive way of delivering your message, you had a really
Speaker 1: good chance of being discovered. Today, there's so much going
Speaker 1: up on YouTube, and I mean you know that, they say,
Speaker 1: like more than a hundred hours every minute goes up
Speaker 1: on YouTube. There's so much stuff going up on YouTube
Speaker 1: that getting discovered is incredibly challenging. I suspect that live
Speaker 1: casting is going to turn into the same thing, and
Speaker 1: probably on a much faster ramp up than YouTube did. Well,
Speaker 1: it's too many content providers, not enough eyeballs. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, I mean, if you It makes me think
Speaker 1: of some of the streams I've seen where I've commented
Speaker 1: on stuff, and then I start recognizing the other people
Speaker 1: who are commenting, and I realized we're all content providers
Speaker 1: commenting on another content provider. Have we just become this
Speaker 1: insular circular audience where all we're what doing is watching
Speaker 1: what each other is doing. Jonathan, can you even imagine
Speaker 1: the horror of those of you out there right now
Speaker 1: who just hear us bandying around words like content provider
Speaker 1: when really we should be saying artists. Yeah, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. Okay, there's certain words. There's certain
Speaker 1: words I don't like using, but I do because it's
Speaker 1: become the standard, right, content provider being one of them.
Speaker 1: But that is what it's called in the industry. If
Speaker 1: that other people look at on the internet, you're a
Speaker 1: content provide. Talent is another one I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: like being called the talent um for multiple reasons. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, there are a lot of words in
Speaker 1: the industry that I would prefer to use a synonyms for,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of the standards. Also, we should just
Speaker 1: point out that there's a lot of competition and already
Speaker 1: in this space right there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: providers offering up services that are similar to one another.
Speaker 1: And therein lies another problem because that divides the audience further.
Speaker 1: You know, not not everyone is going to have every
Speaker 1: live streaming app. You know, it's just not not something
Speaker 1: that most people are interested in, so your audience, you
Speaker 1: have to sit there and start making decisions like do
Speaker 1: I want most of my audience, do I think most
Speaker 1: of the people that I need to reach, or on
Speaker 1: this platform or this other platform, And you start having
Speaker 1: to make really tough decisions on that, particularly if you
Speaker 1: want to try and make a living off of this.
Speaker 1: Not everyone does if you. If you're just doing it
Speaker 1: for fun, maybe it doesn't matter. But if you're trying
Speaker 1: to make a living, you might say, well, what percentage
Speaker 1: of my fan base is active on Facebook versus Twitter,
Speaker 1: just as an example, or would it be better for
Speaker 1: me to go to something like Twitch, which is a
Speaker 1: more specific live streaming video service. You know, I used
Speaker 1: to think Twitch was just for video games until I
Speaker 1: heard that some people use Twitch to say, like, here,
Speaker 1: watch me show you how to weave a basket. Well,
Speaker 1: for a while, Twitch was just about video games, and
Speaker 1: if your content did not have anything to do about
Speaker 1: video games, they'd say knock that off or play some games. Uh.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until that they started opening it up to stuff.
Speaker 1: That was because I have a friend who used Twitch
Speaker 1: to live stream his his podcast, and his podcast occasionally
Speaker 1: would talk about video games, but it wasn't a video
Speaker 1: game oriented podcast, and there were issues that he had
Speaker 1: with Twitch. It was a very popular show, but which
Speaker 1: was like, no, it has to be about video games.
Speaker 1: And then about a year later that's when they changed
Speaker 1: their their policy. But at any rate, you also don't
Speaker 1: know how many of these conflicting services are still going
Speaker 1: to be around in years to come. Right, if one
Speaker 1: of them n's up being really dominant in the space,
Speaker 1: the others might end up fading way. Well, I think
Speaker 1: at the moment we're recording this, there is a large
Speaker 1: scuffle going on, right, there's there are multiple scuffles going on.
Speaker 1: One of the scuffles. I mean there's a major uh
Speaker 1: there has been recently and there is still major competition
Speaker 1: for live video us. Yeah, I mean, you know you've
Speaker 1: got you've got the major players in their Facebook is
Speaker 1: in there, YouTube is in there. Then you've got things
Speaker 1: like Periscope that that are still in there, and then
Speaker 1: you have former streaming services like mere cat walk about.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's uh, never once used it, but it has
Speaker 1: a cute name. As a cute name and apparently was
Speaker 1: a very easy user interface by the time I I
Speaker 1: didn't have access to it because it opened up originally
Speaker 1: to innern iPhone users and I use an Android device.
Speaker 1: In fact, periscope was the same way. It was active
Speaker 1: first on i iOS and took a while to get
Speaker 1: over to Android. Irritates me because Android is a far
Speaker 1: more popular platform. But that's a different story. It's a
Speaker 1: different podcast. Um any rate, I never got a chance
Speaker 1: to use Merecat, and then by the time I really
Speaker 1: would have taken a look at it, it was no
Speaker 1: longer supported. It's still a thing, but we'll get into that.
Speaker 1: In fact, let's talk about some of these main players,
Speaker 1: the big names that are in the a live streaming field. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: you mentioned Twitch, and should we count video game play
Speaker 1: because obviously that is a form of live streaming some
Speaker 1: type of content. But when I was first thinking about
Speaker 1: the topic for this episode, I was thinking about people
Speaker 1: sort of talking to a camera. But but I guess
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have to be that, would it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be that. And also, you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of Twitch gamers who have a picture within picture presentation,
Speaker 1: so the major picture is the video game they're playing,
Speaker 1: and they have a smaller picture, which is a camera
Speaker 1: that's on them a reaction camera, and they do tend
Speaker 1: to address the audience live while they play. Not everyone
Speaker 1: does this, obviously. Some people just play through a game
Speaker 1: and they're just showing how they play, and maybe that's
Speaker 1: all you're doing, is just passively watching someone else play
Speaker 1: a game. But a lot of them turn it into
Speaker 1: something more where they might be commenting on something completely
Speaker 1: unrelated to the game they're playing. They might be telling
Speaker 1: a story or explaining their personal political philosophy and maybe
Speaker 1: in anything. So I think it's certainly counts. The interesting
Speaker 1: thing to me is that twitch dot tv started off
Speaker 1: as a spinoff of justin TV and it became so popular.
Speaker 1: Is that was that a Justin Bieber based service? It
Speaker 1: was not. It was named after the founder or one
Speaker 1: of the founders, So justin TV was. It was pretty
Speaker 1: popular as a live streaming service as as far as
Speaker 1: those go in the early days. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: one of those things that wasn't nearly as popular as
Speaker 1: the stuff we're talking about today. But it was, uh
Speaker 1: like Justin TV and you Stream were like the two
Speaker 1: big names in live casting. But dude, I forgot about
Speaker 1: you stream. Oh I didn't. That's what we used to
Speaker 1: uh live stream how stuff works live. Yeah, we could
Speaker 1: have upwards of thirty six people watching our show at
Speaker 1: a time, but it was kept online so you could
Speaker 1: actually watch the old episodes afterwards at any rate. It
Speaker 1: got so popular that justin TV actually rebranded itself as
Speaker 1: a Twitch Interactive and eventually ended up getting the attention
Speaker 1: of some pretty big players in the space. I was
Speaker 1: rumored that Google was going to buy Twitch Interactive, but
Speaker 1: it turned out that Amazon announced it would acquire Twitch
Speaker 1: for about nine hundred seventy million dollars, so just under
Speaker 1: a billion. That's some amount of dollars. As quite a
Speaker 1: few dollars, quite a few more than I will ever
Speaker 1: see in my entire life, which is fine mostly but anyway,
Speaker 1: Uh twitch has more than a million broadcasters and more
Speaker 1: than a hundred million monthly visitors to the site, so
Speaker 1: it's a pretty big business. And you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's the sort of thing that confounds people in the
Speaker 1: cable industry, like why are where are these kids just
Speaker 1: logging in to watch some other kids play video games?
Speaker 1: We want them on our watching our shows and watching
Speaker 1: our commercials and buying bugging mom and dad to buy
Speaker 1: our stuff. Um, but that's it's just been wildly popular
Speaker 1: their professional life casters on Twitch, and the way they
Speaker 1: make their money is through a multitude of ways. They
Speaker 1: can get sponsorships, they can get ad revenue, they can
Speaker 1: have partnerships with Twitch itself. If they are a partner
Speaker 1: with Twitch, they can then charge subscribers a certain amount
Speaker 1: of money in order to access uh new features. For example,
Speaker 1: it may be that if you're on a Twitch performers
Speaker 1: stream and you're you're in the chat room. You can
Speaker 1: chat and stuff, but you start seeing like weird UH
Speaker 1: emojis and things popping up that you don't have access to.
Speaker 1: If you become a paid subscriber, you get access to
Speaker 1: like v I P chat areas and special emoticons, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. What happens behind the closed doors of Twitch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that exclusivity that ends up being the big selling
Speaker 1: factor there. Uh. And also it may be that the
Speaker 1: person playing is paying more attention to the subscriber chat
Speaker 1: than the general chat that kind of stuff. Um. They
Speaker 1: also can ask for donations as well. It's not just
Speaker 1: through through these kind of approaches that it was interesting.
Speaker 1: It looked to me like, UM, I read an article
Speaker 1: about this and in the article, the person who was
Speaker 1: writing it just made some estimated guesses about how much
Speaker 1: this one Twitch user was making a year. And we're
Speaker 1: talking about someone who has nine hundred thousand subscribers and
Speaker 1: uh and a lot of different ads and things, and
Speaker 1: they estimated that based upon those numbers and not taking
Speaker 1: into account things like donations or other sponsorships, that they
Speaker 1: were making two thousand dollars a year playing games. Now,
Speaker 1: to be fair, they're also working like sixty hour weeks
Speaker 1: doing this stuff, So it sounds like, oh wow, First
Speaker 1: that sounds amazing, and then you sit there and think, man,
Speaker 1: that sounds exhausting too, So it's not it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: the coushy job that a lot of people just imagine
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, But then again, I guess a lot
Speaker 1: of people work sixty hours a week doing stuff that
Speaker 1: is uh yeah, maybe not not as video games and
Speaker 1: all up. Yeah, but you have to be you have
Speaker 1: to be good at too. Write like I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess there's some entertainment value and someone who's who's perpetually
Speaker 1: terrible at video games if their presentation is right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that sounds like a kind of chemick that might
Speaker 1: not last very long for for more than just a
Speaker 1: handful of performers out there. Um, but let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of the other ones. Let's talk about periscope. Well,
Speaker 1: periscope is one that we're familiar with because a lot
Speaker 1: of us here at the House Stuff Works office have
Speaker 1: done periscope broadcasts where a lot of times, for example,
Speaker 1: podcast hosts will set up a weekly periscope session where
Speaker 1: they will just talk to their listeners. And so I've
Speaker 1: done that for my, uh, the other podcasts that I'm
Speaker 1: on here Stuff to Blow your Mind. My co hosts
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and Christian Zeger and I will sometimes get
Speaker 1: on periscope and just talk to people about episodes that
Speaker 1: have come out recently, what's coming up at next, and
Speaker 1: answer questions. A lot of times people have questions about
Speaker 1: stuff that we didn't cover in each of the episodes,
Speaker 1: and and so it can be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I enjoy it. And so the presentation of periscope is
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward. It's just you have a camera. Uh, the
Speaker 1: camera broadcasts what it sees in real time live, so
Speaker 1: usually it'll just be us sitting around talking to the camera.
Speaker 1: But you can also use it to broadcast I don't
Speaker 1: know whatever is going on around you if you wanted
Speaker 1: to point it out the window at to somebody who
Speaker 1: is scaling the side of the building you're working in
Speaker 1: with suction cup hands. I don't know why I went
Speaker 1: to that. Then I guess that's just something I expect
Speaker 1: to see someday. Uh, you could periscope that. So it's that.
Speaker 1: But then also people can comment, comments come in, you
Speaker 1: can interact with them if you want to. I would
Speaker 1: recommend if you are a periscope uh broadcaster, you probably
Speaker 1: should interact with the comments because people kind of like
Speaker 1: to have that interactive experience. They want to hear back
Speaker 1: from you. Otherwise they start suspecting that, hey, this is
Speaker 1: just this isn't live, which is weird for periscope, but
Speaker 1: I get that all the time on Facebook Life. They
Speaker 1: get mad if you don't interact. Yeah, uh and so,
Speaker 1: and that's pretty much what it is. So. Periscope was
Speaker 1: founded by Cavon, Bike Poor and Joe Bernstein, and according
Speaker 1: to the official creation legend, bike Poor was traveling in
Speaker 1: istanbul In when a bunch of protests broke broke out
Speaker 1: in Tuxim Square in Istanbul and he wasn't at the
Speaker 1: location of the protest, but he wanted to know what
Speaker 1: was going on, and so he could check Twitter to
Speaker 1: see what people were saying about the event, but he
Speaker 1: couldn't see the event for himself. And talking to Business Insider,
Speaker 1: he said, quote, it just occurred to me, there were
Speaker 1: so many smartphones out there, Why wasn't there a way
Speaker 1: for me to ask who else was out there and
Speaker 1: what was happening there? Um and so in the early press,
Speaker 1: periscope was often compared to teleportation. I find that kind
Speaker 1: of a funny metaphor because really the obvious point of
Speaker 1: comparison to me is just like having a live video
Speaker 1: camera there. Yeah, I don't really see the teleportation aspect,
Speaker 1: but I think I think it would depend on I
Speaker 1: think it's the fact that live video, uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: tough to get live video of brand new, breaking events
Speaker 1: unless it was something that was scheduled right Like, it's
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of being someplace when you know
Speaker 1: something's going to happen, as opposed to the fact that
Speaker 1: since we all have smartphones these days, and I know
Speaker 1: that I'm making a crazy generalization to say all, but
Speaker 1: since there's so many smartphones out there that are capable
Speaker 1: of broadcasting. Now, it would be unusual for a public
Speaker 1: event to occur where there are no smartphones capable of
Speaker 1: broadcasting that. So it is more like teleportation because unlike
Speaker 1: you're seeing, you know, live video of of the aftermath
Speaker 1: of an event, you can actually see live video of
Speaker 1: lots of events because the cameras are already everywhere well,
Speaker 1: And I think that's another way that the interaction is
Speaker 1: very important. It's a very important element of periscope where
Speaker 1: it's more like teleportation, and that you can't just watch
Speaker 1: what's happening. You can comment on it, and you can
Speaker 1: try to get the person who's holding the phone to
Speaker 1: do something and say like, hey, can you hold about higher.
Speaker 1: I want to see what's going on here, look around
Speaker 1: the corner of that kind of stuff. Yeah, uh, And
Speaker 1: so that that that went on for a while. Twitter
Speaker 1: bought periscope in January. For what was the number you
Speaker 1: saw on that? I saw around a hundred million, But
Speaker 1: there were a lot of guesses all over the place.
Speaker 1: It's it really First of all, I keep it pretty quiet.
Speaker 1: But secondly, because periscope still wasn't really a thing when
Speaker 1: Twitter bought them, like it hadn't really made a big splash.
Speaker 1: Um it was what the what happened in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of Twitter buying Periscope made more news than the fact
Speaker 1: Twitter brought periscope. Uh yeah, and so in August periscope
Speaker 1: claimed it had ten million users. More on that number
Speaker 1: and a bit yeah. And also, uh, the other thing
Speaker 1: I thought was really fun about periscope and I'm glad
Speaker 1: that they fixed it so it no longer becomes like
Speaker 1: a a means of one upsmanship between between various periscopers
Speaker 1: is that if you like what you're watching, you can
Speaker 1: tap your screen. It sends little hearts to show up
Speaker 1: in the video. It's so nice seeing all those little
Speaker 1: hearts floating. It was very sweet. It's very reaffirming. Uh.
Speaker 1: And for a while periscope took count of all those hearts,
Speaker 1: which ended up becoming like almost like bragging rights for
Speaker 1: various um uh parascopers out there. Like it was this
Speaker 1: idea that by having this most liked video, it's gonna
Speaker 1: jump up the charts and be easily discovered. Right, I know, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: tell the truth. It just steamed your biscuits that you
Speaker 1: didn't get the most hearts. It's not so much that,
Speaker 1: but rather that the system was easily gained. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: it was very easy to just watch your own thing
Speaker 1: and just keep hitting hearts, hearts, hearts, hearts, hearts, and
Speaker 1: you could just tell your viewers like, hey, hammer on
Speaker 1: those hearts for us, We've done it before. It's funny, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then so do it. They're they're like little automata.
Speaker 1: They just right well, and on the flip side, so
Speaker 1: are we because they asked us to do things, and
Speaker 1: occasionally we do them to prove that it's live, and
Speaker 1: then it all just turns out that we're the ones
Speaker 1: being puppeteered. But at any rate, the that no longer
Speaker 1: holds that much water, Like it's not it's not something
Speaker 1: that really boosts a video's performance in any meaningful way.
Speaker 1: It's just a nice feedback mechanism. So it's not like
Speaker 1: a has any meaningful impact at this point. The other
Speaker 1: service we wanted to talk about that was very similar
Speaker 1: to Periscope would be mere Cat. Mere Cat and Periscope
Speaker 1: when they first came out, they were very very similar.
Speaker 1: Um mere Cat was released in February, just ahead of
Speaker 1: South By Southwest, and it was very much a favorite
Speaker 1: at that at that. Yeah. Yeah, and this is something
Speaker 1: we see all the time where we'll see apps get
Speaker 1: launched either just before or at south By Southwest in
Speaker 1: an attempt to generate a lot of bus because that's
Speaker 1: where you've got a ton of people south By Southwest
Speaker 1: interactive as a lot of folks who are influential in
Speaker 1: the text space. And if you can get a lot
Speaker 1: of people using your app, generally speaking, it tends to
Speaker 1: turn out pretty well for you. And uh, it got
Speaker 1: a lot of widespread attention at south By Southwest, but
Speaker 1: it also relied on Twitter to allow live casters a
Speaker 1: chance to reach an audience. It tapped into Twitter's social
Speaker 1: graph in other words. And then Twitter in March cut
Speaker 1: off mere Cat's ability to use the Twitter log in
Speaker 1: after Twitter bought Periscope, Yeah by a couple of months. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when Baroscope came out using Twitter's a p I, uh,
Speaker 1: mere Cat mysteriously no longer had access to it. And
Speaker 1: that ended up causing a lot of conversation in the
Speaker 1: space about how Twitter was allowed to do this because
Speaker 1: their private company and they bought this other tool, and
Speaker 1: they said, look, our policy says that if you try
Speaker 1: and replicate something that we have we can kick you off.
Speaker 1: And we bought this company back in January, and you
Speaker 1: launched your service in February, and so, uh, it was
Speaker 1: kind of a little ugly, but Merecat soldiered on for
Speaker 1: about a year. Uh. In August of twenty fifteen, it
Speaker 1: was already clear that the service was on the downward slope,
Speaker 1: and by March twenty sixteen, CEO Ben Reuben made the
Speaker 1: decision to change the company's focus too and always live
Speaker 1: social network. I don't know what that really means yet either, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because as far as I know, Merecat hasn't actually launched
Speaker 1: anything new, but they did say they were essentially pulling
Speaker 1: all their resources off of live video. Not that the
Speaker 1: tool is gone, but there's no more development in that
Speaker 1: space for Meercat there, So no, it's that's a lost
Speaker 1: cause for us um and so it doesn't look great
Speaker 1: for live video from Meercat anymore. Well. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: found an article on recode that had a part of
Speaker 1: an email from the Mercat CEO, Ben Reuben to investors
Speaker 1: from February. I thought this was interesting. So he was
Speaker 1: kind of trying to explain what had gone on with
Speaker 1: the bad year, and in what he said was quote,
Speaker 1: mobile broadcast video hasn't quite exploded as quickly as we'd hoped.
Speaker 1: The distribution advantages of Twitter, Periscope, and Facebook Live drew
Speaker 1: more early users to them away from us, and we
Speaker 1: were not able to grow as quickly alongside as we
Speaker 1: had planned. So that's talking about one thing. There is
Speaker 1: just like who has access to people using the internet
Speaker 1: right now, who can steer them, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: funnel them in the live broadcast direction that that they want.
Speaker 1: And then also I thought that was interesting that he
Speaker 1: said that broadcast video hasn't quite exploded as quickly as
Speaker 1: we'd hoped, because I mean, if you read everything else,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh man, this is the way of the future.
Speaker 1: Everybody's got to get on live broadcasts. Well again, I mean,
Speaker 1: is is that just him spinning it the you know,
Speaker 1: the way that makes his company look better, or I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's more Again back to that
Speaker 1: problem of so many different competitors in the space. That
Speaker 1: fractures the audience, right the market share gets divvied up.
Speaker 1: So some people may be like, listen, I don't want
Speaker 1: to use Facebook. I just use Twitter, So I want
Speaker 1: you to be on periscope. I've got some people who
Speaker 1: have said that to me. When I do, I I'll
Speaker 1: put out a blast on Twitter saying hey, I'm going
Speaker 1: live on Facebook Live at three o'clock so you can
Speaker 1: tune in at how stuff works is Facebook page and
Speaker 1: watch me and I I often will get a message
Speaker 1: of saying, hey, I don't use Facebook anymore? Could you?
Speaker 1: Have you ever thought about going back to periscope and
Speaker 1: just a little peek behind the curtain. The reason why
Speaker 1: I tend to use Facebook Live more than baroscope is that,
Speaker 1: at least based upon the metrics, more people watch. So
Speaker 1: those metrics are also kind of interesting. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: talking and it may very well be that there's a
Speaker 1: particular thing Facebook does that is uh misleading me into
Speaker 1: thinking that. But at at any rate, um, you know,
Speaker 1: mircat now looks like it's heading more towards using are
Speaker 1: developing a tool that's kind similar to like skype Ree,
Speaker 1: Google hang Out, something that's meant for a video messaging
Speaker 1: service that would be more like a closed group as
Speaker 1: opposed to one person broadcasting to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: So it could be like if we wanted to do
Speaker 1: a little video chat among the writers one day that
Speaker 1: might be a tool we would use. I don't really
Speaker 1: know why they would go into that space, seeing is
Speaker 1: how it's already represented by some pretty hefty companies like
Speaker 1: Skype and Google. But that's that's at least some of
Speaker 1: the speculation around this. Uh, We've got other examples their Snapchat,
Speaker 1: although that's really almost live. It's not really a live
Speaker 1: video streaming service. You can record very short video snippets
Speaker 1: and people can then watch them. The big attraction to
Speaker 1: Snapchat is that it only lives on the servers for
Speaker 1: twenty four hours. Usedly, yeah, at least it's only accessible
Speaker 1: by by viewers for twenty four hours. But there of
Speaker 1: course I have vague memories of us having talked about
Speaker 1: this on the show before there being some big aster
Speaker 1: risk to that. Yeah, it's I don't recall with enough
Speaker 1: detail to say now there there's some there's some definite, uh,
Speaker 1: questionable things going on, not questionable in the sense of
Speaker 1: the content may still very well live on a server.
Speaker 1: You can actually save stuff to your snaps too. You
Speaker 1: can save your own snaps. Also, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of tools out there for people to save stuff, um
Speaker 1: that they see on Snapchat, like little add ons that
Speaker 1: weren't intended originally by the service but have obviously popped up.
Speaker 1: So that's only kind of semi live. But then we
Speaker 1: get to the big one we were talking about before
Speaker 1: Facebook Live. This one was a relative latecomer, launched in
Speaker 1: August of two fifteen, and it was a controlled launch, Like,
Speaker 1: it wasn't rolled out to Facebook users at large. It
Speaker 1: was rolled out to specific movers and shakers in the
Speaker 1: entertainment industry, for example, who already had really large followings
Speaker 1: in order to kind of um boot this idea early
Speaker 1: in the stage of of launch. Right, So, um, some
Speaker 1: big pages that had lots of followers, or entertainers personalities
Speaker 1: that had a lot of followers, they were the ones
Speaker 1: who got access to this tool first um and eventually
Speaker 1: expanded to all Apple Mobile users in January and then
Speaker 1: everybody else by February. So uh, it was a controlled rollout,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. You can actually see how it's performing
Speaker 1: and start making tweaks before you give everyone access to it. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you haven't noticed, Facebook wants you to be
Speaker 1: watching Facebook, Uh, you really should be watching it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There have been a lot of high profile live events
Speaker 1: that have used Facebook Live which are all in partnership
Speaker 1: with Facebook. It's not just that they coincidentally decided to
Speaker 1: use Facebook Live. These are very obviously partnerships and there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with that necessarily, especially if it's transparent. But
Speaker 1: it's also interesting that UM Apparently the notifications on Facebook
Speaker 1: Live events have recently changed. It used to be that
Speaker 1: if every time we would go live on How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: everyone who followed How Stuff worksoul get a little notification
Speaker 1: on that, and people would go and respond to it.
Speaker 1: They'd like, what's this and they'd see a video and
Speaker 1: some of them would get irritated because they get this notification. Uh,
Speaker 1: you could turn those off. I think now. I did
Speaker 1: housetopp Works live podcast or broadcast last week, and uh,
Speaker 1: and Sherry, who is the person who kind of oversees
Speaker 1: that at our office, came in and said, Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: seeing fewer numbers or lower numbers now, but we think
Speaker 1: that might be because Facebook might be tweaking the notification
Speaker 1: system so that it's not blasting everybody the way it
Speaker 1: had been, but perhaps they were getting some negative feedback
Speaker 1: on that. So it's still influx um now. According to
Speaker 1: their chief product officer Chris Cox, Facebook has more than
Speaker 1: a hundred people working on Facebook Live and part of
Speaker 1: what they're working on are some updates that will soon
Speaker 1: be rolling out and may very well some of them
Speaker 1: may be in place by the time you listen to
Speaker 1: this podcast. They were announced back on April UM and
Speaker 1: we're recording in early May. So one of those features
Speaker 1: is the ability to feed to filter your live streams
Speaker 1: to only certain people on your friends list, so that
Speaker 1: way you could broadcast straight to the people that you
Speaker 1: want to talk to and and it doesn't go out
Speaker 1: to everybody else. That could be useful if you're doing
Speaker 1: something like doing a just a quick update to folks,
Speaker 1: or you need to pass on some important news to
Speaker 1: your friends that kind of stuff, um, or just you know,
Speaker 1: you just want to show off to the jerks and accounting.
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's a lot of different possible opportunities there,
Speaker 1: I guess. Or if you're just doing your own unboxing video,
Speaker 1: nice serial unboxing video. That's my idea I've been thinking
Speaker 1: we should do is Cereal on boxing. We're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna do some statistical analysis my lucky charms. Oh it's
Speaker 1: full of tricks. Wow, what's the percentage that a green
Speaker 1: clover will come out next. Um. They're also including some
Speaker 1: other filters that were present on Snapchat as well, the
Speaker 1: ability to apply visual filters to live video and scribble
Speaker 1: on the screen while you're broadcasting, which is not again
Speaker 1: that different from what we've seen with Snapchat where they
Speaker 1: have all these different filters and overlays. You can do
Speaker 1: that on Periscope. Now you can draw on the screen.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the the Snapchat one has some problematic filters,
Speaker 1: ones that I think they really need to rethink before
Speaker 1: implementing again. For example, they have like they have like
Speaker 1: the face swapping stuff, which is fine where you can
Speaker 1: swap your face with some other face and then they
Speaker 1: they'll actually animate the face with your facial motions, which
Speaker 1: is kind of creepy and interesting. But they've also done
Speaker 1: one like they had one that was a Bob Marley
Speaker 1: filter which put Bob Marley's face onto the Snapchat users
Speaker 1: face and some people said, this is getting uncomfortably close
Speaker 1: to black face. Yeah, so there's some things that that
Speaker 1: people said, like maybe we need to maybe someone needs
Speaker 1: to rethink that. That actually made a big fuss on Twitter.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, when that went life, Um,
Speaker 1: that was on April by the way, when that that happened. So, um, anyway,
Speaker 1: they're also going to give the broadcaster emoji reactions that
Speaker 1: could pop up on screen, um, and a dedicated app
Speaker 1: tab just for video, and a world map that will
Speaker 1: let you find broadcasts happening around the globe, so you
Speaker 1: can actually search for live broadcasts more easily that way. Um. So,
Speaker 1: So what I guess the question is why did Facebook
Speaker 1: want to get into this live broadcasting game when you've
Speaker 1: already got these players out there like like Twitter, Chin,
Speaker 1: Periscope and you know, all these other ones we've already
Speaker 1: talked about. Why is it that Facebook says now we've
Speaker 1: got to be the ones? Well, Facebook, Facebook's a publicly
Speaker 1: trade company, right and they want to own the world.
Speaker 1: They want to own the world. You can only grow
Speaker 1: so much when one in seven people on the planet
Speaker 1: has a Facebook account, right. So it's one of the
Speaker 1: things they have to do is find new ways to
Speaker 1: engage users to make sure that they stay loyal to Facebook.
Speaker 1: They don't go anywhere, they don't give up on the platform.
Speaker 1: Look at Facebook all day. And by creating this Facebook
Speaker 1: Live platform, they give more reason for people to go
Speaker 1: to Facebook. They give more reason for people to create
Speaker 1: stuff on Facebook where it lives on Facebook. It's not
Speaker 1: a link that you've dumped into Facebook. It lives there.
Speaker 1: And now you've seen other versions of this with things
Speaker 1: like Facebook articles, where now instead of sharing an article
Speaker 1: to link out to an external site to read something
Speaker 1: about the news, you can just click through to a
Speaker 1: Facebook news page that has an article embedded. The same
Speaker 1: thing with Facebook video, right, instead of embedding a link
Speaker 1: to like a YouTube video, you can upload directly into
Speaker 1: Facebook and have it lived there. Clearly that benefits Facebook, right,
Speaker 1: I mean it's the same sort of thing. It benefits
Speaker 1: the company, and it creates more more Facebook in your Facebook,
Speaker 1: so you can Facebook all the time, right. And you know,
Speaker 1: you could be cynical and just say like this is
Speaker 1: just a way to to leverage the users and make
Speaker 1: more money, and to some extent that is absolutely true.
Speaker 1: But it also creates more uh more features that users
Speaker 1: can actually use and enjoy and get some benefit out of.
Speaker 1: So there's it's not like it's just corporate evil. Well no,
Speaker 1: I mean they're trying to make money. I guess it
Speaker 1: depends on do you do you want to say that
Speaker 1: in a harsh tone of voice or not. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't have a problem with companies trying to make money.
Speaker 1: That's the purpose for companies to exist. The problem, of course,
Speaker 1: is that if they do so without any checks or balances,
Speaker 1: because companies also by nature, are a moral uh. Despite
Speaker 1: the fact that in the United States we can talk
Speaker 1: about corporations as if they are people, they do not
Speaker 1: have any moral or ethical core to themselves. It's all
Speaker 1: about the people who steer the company, right. Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe Wayne Enterprises, you know, yeah, Stark Industries.
Speaker 1: So um. At any rate, the those are the big players.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of other ones that are in
Speaker 1: the space too. There are tons of apps and online
Speaker 1: services like Google Hangouts being another one that we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: You can do a Google hangout and broadcast to the public,
Speaker 1: and it houses that broadcast on YouTube where you can
Speaker 1: watch live and it will stay there. It can watch
Speaker 1: it afterward too. So so we've got this trend now,
Speaker 1: and we've got all these people competing to be the
Speaker 1: biggest players, uh in the live live casting business. That
Speaker 1: you know, some people out there working in the tech
Speaker 1: industry have it in their head that the next big
Speaker 1: thing is everybody watching other people do stuff live on
Speaker 1: the internet. Is that true? Uh So one of the
Speaker 1: things we can look at is how popular is this
Speaker 1: right now? So there are some numbers I was looking
Speaker 1: at for Periscope. Periscope, of course is is periscope. It's
Speaker 1: not the entire profile of what people are doing in
Speaker 1: terms of live video on the Internet, but it's one
Speaker 1: of the big names. So, as I said earlier in August,
Speaker 1: periscope claimed it had ten million users, which oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's not bad. But what that meant was that
Speaker 1: ten million people had registered accounts. It was about two
Speaker 1: million people who used the app every day at that time. Also,
Speaker 1: at the same time, users were watching a combined forty
Speaker 1: one year's worth of video every single day. According to
Speaker 1: an article I found on Recode from March, that number
Speaker 1: has gone up and now the Periscope users are supposedly
Speaker 1: watching a hundred and ten years worth of video every
Speaker 1: single day. Isn't it great? These metrics we have? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you sit there and like, how is that possible?
Speaker 1: Like well, matters of scale, right, you know, you just
Speaker 1: look at the number of people and then you say, well, holmeut,
Speaker 1: how much time is the average person viewing. Multiply that
Speaker 1: by the number of people who are on average using
Speaker 1: baroscope on a day. That's where you get that number. Um,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Uh. And there are other metrics we can
Speaker 1: talk about, Like we mentioned the Twitch one, right, the
Speaker 1: one the more than a million Twitch broadcasters, and there
Speaker 1: are a hundred million monthly visitors and that was I
Speaker 1: think back in too, so those numbers have changed obviously
Speaker 1: since then. But what about Facebook. Yeah, well, they don't
Speaker 1: really share their numbers as far as I could tell.
Speaker 1: I dug around and could not find anything. So I
Speaker 1: imagine they're they're keeping that protected. I maybe we'll hear
Speaker 1: more when they do like a shareholders meeting. They might
Speaker 1: have some some statistics that they'll share, but at the
Speaker 1: moment we're largely in the dark. But we do know
Speaker 1: they were orderly have something like one point five billion
Speaker 1: users around the world. Uh. And from our experience, every
Speaker 1: time somebody goes live, Facebook tries to show that video
Speaker 1: to every one of those viewers. Yeah, that se but
Speaker 1: I think I think they, like I said, I think
Speaker 1: they've scaled back on that in the in the relatively
Speaker 1: recent past, but there was definitely it still happens every
Speaker 1: time we do a live video. Yeah, there's aggressive in
Speaker 1: app promotion. They're trying to get people watching this stuff, right,
Speaker 1: and you will get comments like what is this? Who
Speaker 1: are you? Why am I seeing this? Yeah, and we're like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're just trying to go about your business.
Speaker 1: You can, you don't have to watch this. Please, please
Speaker 1: don't be mad at me. I didn't make the algorithm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they obviously have a strong desire to put users
Speaker 1: eyes on live streaming video. And I can speak from
Speaker 1: personal experience and say that when you broadcast live on Facebook, uh,
Speaker 1: I feel like the number of views you reportedly get
Speaker 1: do not seem exactly to match up with the number
Speaker 1: of viewers actively engaging through comments and liking and stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: you'd expect all the people engaging through comments and liking
Speaker 1: to to be some small subset of the total number
Speaker 1: of viewers. So I'm not thinking that every viewer would
Speaker 1: be interacting, But it seems like it's actually a very
Speaker 1: small subset compared to the number they're saying, watch to
Speaker 1: your live video. And so I'm wondering how they quantify
Speaker 1: what counts as a viewer of a live video for
Speaker 1: a Facebook video. Well, I can tell you that. In fact,
Speaker 1: i'll tell you that right now because I have this
Speaker 1: later on in our notes, but it's pertinent to this conversation. Uh.
Speaker 1: It takes three seconds of viewing the video before Facebook
Speaker 1: counts it as a viewer. Yeah, so if you have
Speaker 1: a video playing for three seconds or longer than you
Speaker 1: are a viewer of that video. Here's the other part
Speaker 1: of that. You may have noticed that when you pull
Speaker 1: up Facebook, videos will start to auto play, not necessarily
Speaker 1: with sound, but they'll start automatically play. And if an
Speaker 1: auto plays, for if you're on that screen for three seconds, congratulations,
Speaker 1: you've just become a Facebook viewer. So the viewer numbers
Speaker 1: can be high because it could just be that people
Speaker 1: were scrolling through their Facebook they came across the video,
Speaker 1: it started to auto play, and before they scrolled off
Speaker 1: of that screen, three seconds had passed. And then you
Speaker 1: have this rather inflated number of the viewers for your
Speaker 1: content and it looks great. You start feeling really proud
Speaker 1: about yourself. Right. Did they end up coming up with
Speaker 1: these numbers that make some media providers on the internet
Speaker 1: just kind of salivate over this? How do they get
Speaker 1: that many million views on their live broadcast, like the
Speaker 1: big one being the BuzzFeed broadcast of the Watermelon and
Speaker 1: the Rubber bands. Are you familiar with this? Oh, I
Speaker 1: know exactly what you're talking about. I didn't watch it,
Speaker 1: but I know I saw people talking about how many
Speaker 1: views it got. It was like forty seven minute long
Speaker 1: video or something like that. But I also saw a
Speaker 1: breakdown afterwards that said, you know, this does not mean
Speaker 1: all these people watched the whole video. Most of them
Speaker 1: watched a few seconds of it. Right, It might have
Speaker 1: been that at its peak, I think there was like
Speaker 1: more than eight hundred thousand. I think at its peak
Speaker 1: more than people are watching it but simultaneously. But then
Speaker 1: when you factor in this these different uh components, the
Speaker 1: idea that it's pre rolling as soon as you go by,
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff, it could give a very
Speaker 1: false positive of how many people were engaged watching your material. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So it's problematic with and this is not
Speaker 1: just we don't mean to just signal out Facebook. This
Speaker 1: is something that is a largely unanswered question in live
Speaker 1: video on the Internet in general. Well, I mean it
Speaker 1: brings it brings to mind the main question for me
Speaker 1: which is is personal live video streaming here to stay
Speaker 1: as like a new may eager thing on what data
Speaker 1: is going to be flying back and forth on the
Speaker 1: on the web going into the future. Or is the
Speaker 1: current popularity more of a an inorganic industry fad that
Speaker 1: the platforms are trying to push this and people are
Speaker 1: sort of consuming it somewhat, but it's not going to
Speaker 1: stay at this level forever, or it's not going to
Speaker 1: get much bigger. I think. I think there are certain
Speaker 1: audiences that love the live video and they will continue
Speaker 1: to love the live video. Whether that audience is broad
Speaker 1: enough for it to support the massive amount of investment
Speaker 1: we have seen from major companies and startups alike, that's
Speaker 1: another question. Um, it's one that I'm a little skeptical about.
Speaker 1: I think there have been some people who have said
Speaker 1: that it may very well be that this ends up
Speaker 1: being a a very popular but transitory kind of fad,
Speaker 1: Like it's something where after after it has lived out
Speaker 1: its initial burst onto the scene, and we may be
Speaker 1: getting close to it. I mean, we're a year in
Speaker 1: with the mobile stuff, Um, that it'll kind of fade
Speaker 1: into something more like Yeah, it's like Twitter. Everyone knows
Speaker 1: about Twitter. A lot of people use Twitter, but it's
Speaker 1: it's not something people are necessarily buzzing about anymore. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I certainly think that now that we're mostly
Speaker 1: past the hardware problems, you know, now that we you
Speaker 1: can broadcast without real bandwidth issues and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: there are always going to be some people doing this.
Speaker 1: But the question for me is just how popular is
Speaker 1: it going to be? Do people really want to keep
Speaker 1: watching the standard kind of video where somebody's just say, hey,
Speaker 1: here's my day. I'm talking into my phone. For all
Speaker 1: my peeps out there who enjoy watching me talking too
Speaker 1: my phone. There's a lot of that going on, And
Speaker 1: I can also still see the continuing appeal for what
Speaker 1: the founder of periscope is actually talking about, meaning sort
Speaker 1: of I don't know what you call it, citizen journalism,
Speaker 1: people who are in a place where something interesting is
Speaker 1: going on, and thus it's more situational that they're broadcasting
Speaker 1: rather than that they are a standard content provider through
Speaker 1: these services. So it's more more of of an event
Speaker 1: based thing and not a personality based thing in that case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the personality based stuff clearly has a place
Speaker 1: as well, simply because the interactive factor, right, if you
Speaker 1: are giving an audience the chance to interact with someone
Speaker 1: they admire for whatever reason, someone they find entertaining or
Speaker 1: informative or whatever, then that's a very powerful experience, much
Speaker 1: more so that, I would argue than watching a static video.
Speaker 1: I mean static video is probably the wrong term, but
Speaker 1: a prerecorded video where you know, yes, you can watch
Speaker 1: a horror movie and say don't go in there, but
Speaker 1: you know that they can hear you. But if you're
Speaker 1: doing a live video, like I think a live video
Speaker 1: walk through a haunted house for someone's you like, don't
Speaker 1: go in there, and like, you know what, that's a
Speaker 1: great idea, I'm going to turn around and go the
Speaker 1: other way, you know, the ruin it. Yeah, I imagine
Speaker 1: if you could interact with the horror movie, you'd ruin it.
Speaker 1: You'd say don't go in there, they'd say okay, and
Speaker 1: then they'd leave, and then it would be boring. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: you you always you always have to have a backup
Speaker 1: zombie in the yard. You know, you gotta have, you
Speaker 1: gotta have, you gotta have your backup monsters so that
Speaker 1: no matter what, you're gonna encounter a dangerous situation. But
Speaker 1: but no, the interactivity does I think add a lot
Speaker 1: of value to this experience, and if they, if the
Speaker 1: various providers out there continue to find interesting ways to
Speaker 1: boost interactivity, I think we could see this sticking around
Speaker 1: for a good long while. It maybe that we have
Speaker 1: m another period, like I said, kind of like YouTube,
Speaker 1: where we see a huge rush of of broadcasters out
Speaker 1: there and it may shake out where they're are a handful,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a hundred really well known broadcasters, and
Speaker 1: then there's everyone else and discovery becomes incredibly challenging. I
Speaker 1: think that's gonna be the like we said at the
Speaker 1: top of the show, I think it's gonna be the
Speaker 1: biggest hurdle for live casting. But I think live casting
Speaker 1: is definitely here to stay, and especially as we get
Speaker 1: even more sophisticated UM streaming opportunities. It's gonna be built
Speaker 1: into everything, just like cameras were built into lots of stuff,
Speaker 1: Just like you know, voice activation has been built into
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. We're gonna see more and more
Speaker 1: of these being incorporated directly into products, like like the
Speaker 1: fact when when the PlayStation four came out and there's
Speaker 1: a button on the controller for you to start broadcasting
Speaker 1: on Twitch. That's a huge message that live casting is
Speaker 1: definitely a big deal. So, uh yeah, I expect that
Speaker 1: we're gonna see more of this, at least in the
Speaker 1: near future. Um, it will be really interesting if it
Speaker 1: continues to be largely unregulated, you know. That's the other
Speaker 1: question is will there come a point where the government
Speaker 1: of the United States decides to step in and pass
Speaker 1: some regulations? Can't wait? I mean that it's already happening
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world, So the question is
Speaker 1: will it happen in the US and and you know,
Speaker 1: in Europe and that kind of thing. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different things to consider, Like when I
Speaker 1: do my walk where I'm periscoping. As I walk around,
Speaker 1: I try very hard to not show off too much
Speaker 1: of the neighborhoods I'm in out of the concern for
Speaker 1: the privacy of the people who live there. But that's
Speaker 1: me trying to be thoughtful. There's nothing to guard against
Speaker 1: that if I were to, If I wanted to, I
Speaker 1: could just walk up to a house periscope live there
Speaker 1: and say, right, the jerk, the jerk who lives here,
Speaker 1: their dog poops on my yard. So here's their address, everybody.
Speaker 1: I mean, I could do that, and that would be
Speaker 1: really crappy of the for them. Yeah, that would be
Speaker 1: that's the nice way of of of of harassing that person.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in the innocent day, yes. Uh So I'm
Speaker 1: hopeful that that largely the communities will be self regulating
Speaker 1: and self policing because, uh, otherwise, you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: have government agencies come into this and start to make rules,
Speaker 1: and that's going to make the whole thing harder to access,
Speaker 1: um and and that that would be a shame. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I definitely would be concerned about
Speaker 1: the privacy and safety of people who had not consented
Speaker 1: to be in a live video and they're not in
Speaker 1: a public space. Um. If they're in a public space,
Speaker 1: that's one thing, but if they're in like in their
Speaker 1: own yard, that's something else. Entirely. At any rate, this
Speaker 1: is an interesting conversation, and obviously it's still developing. We're
Speaker 1: really gonna have to pay attention and see if we
Speaker 1: end up going down a m a pathway where everyone
Speaker 1: is having this awesome communication and we have more access
Speaker 1: than ever to all these amazing events, some some awesome
Speaker 1: and some awful around the world, or if he'll turn
Speaker 1: into like a black mirror situation and we'll be regretting
Speaker 1: the fact that we ever developed the transistor in the
Speaker 1: first place. UM, I'm curious about it, and I want
Speaker 1: to know what you guys think too, Like, what what
Speaker 1: are your views on this whole live casting thing are you?
Speaker 1: Are you a fan? Do you create stuff? Do you
Speaker 1: watch stuff? Do you watch our stuff? If you don't,
Speaker 1: you should, uh and let us know. Send that's a message.
Speaker 1: Our email addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works
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