YouTube Introduces Live Streaming Services, For ‘Partners’ Only
Apr 8th, 2011 | By James Lewin | Category: Internet TV, Video 
YouTube has announced a new live streaming video service, YouTube Live, which they plan to make available to ‘Partners’:
Today we’re announcing the initial roll out of YouTube Live, which will integrate live streaming capabilities and discovery tools directly into the YouTube platform for the first time. This begins with a new YouTube Live browse page, where you can always find the most compelling live events happening on YouTube and add events to your calendar. Subscribe to your favorite YouTube live-streaming partners to be notified of upcoming live streams on your customized homepage.
Today, we’ll also start gradually rolling out our live streaming beta platform, which will allow certain YouTube partners with accounts in good standing to stream live content on YouTube. The goal is to provide thousands of partners with the capability to live stream from their channels in the months ahead. In order to ensure a great live stream viewing experience, we’ll roll this offering out incrementally over time.
The downside of YouTube’s announcement is that it’s only available to a small group of partners – the most profitable users for the site – a direct challenge to other streaming services that offer free streaming more broadly.
The good news about the streaming is that the partners will likely be those who actually produce watchable content. For example, I could see a network like ABC streaming their network online or a distributor like WB using streaming for shows. But we’ll have to wait until it’s actually been running for a while to tell how good it will be. But hopefully they will open it up to anyone who wants to broadcast their own channel.