Justin.tv Archive

ON24 Inc., a media marketing provider, published a report last week about webcasts and specifically the B2B industry. The report looks at webcasts under 60 minutes in length.

Mediapost has a good report summary which includes:

The report shows that registration and attendance is cyclical depending on the time of year or week:

• Forty-seven percent of all registrations occur in the 10 days before a scheduled webcast, with 10.41% registering on the day of the webcast
• The months of December, June and August registered the highest registrant-to-attendee conversion percentages of 64.71%, 58.43% and 57.14% respectively
• Most registrations occurred earlier in the week – Monday (23%), Tuesday (21%), Wednesday (19%) – with the fewest percentage over the weekend

In my 12+ years running online promotions and email campaigns, I have found that Tuesday works best for sweepstakes and Thursday works best for coupon offers. On CN, I try to think about which stories work best on which days. Outside of news, every story can be scheduled based on what I believe the reader response will be.  

The conclusions of the report include:

• There is a cyclical trend of when publishers schedule and deliver webcasts, with registration and attendee levels seeming to rise when there are a lower number of webcasts scheduled
• Archiving a live webcast contributes 15.34% of all registrations, indicating that archiving extends the ROI of the live webcast
• Forty-seven percent of all registrations occurred in the 10 days before a webcast  while most of these registrations occurred earlier in the week (Monday-Wednesday) versus later in the week and weekend

While the findings are based on B2B but I think sites (and webcasters, livecasters and podcasters) such as Justin.tv and Ustream might benefit from this information. I am sure Ustream will provide archives at some point for some of their shows.

Someone on Y Combinator News posted a link to an interesting Alexa chart. I have embedded the chart below using Alexa's new groovy charting service. I could not get the chart to work, so here is a link.

As you can see, Justin is fading (though he is still below 20,000 which is awesome) and Ustream is trending upwards. They are almost at the same spot now. Some on Y Comb are saying Justin is playing around to tweak his Alexa ranking, I don't see anything of the such. Nothing like Jason's attempt last year.

Now, in Justin's defense, what does this traffic chart really mean when people are spending so much time watching his videos. So they may only view the page one time a day but sit on it for 4 hours at a time. This is why Alexa is broken. And actually in this case, all of the stats apps are broken. Same thing with Ustream. Also remember that users might watch Justin's videos elsewhere. When will we be able to capture the entire brand across the web. This part just frustrates the heck out of me. You can also read our other coverage of Justin.tv and Ustream.

Update: Corsin sent over a twitter, aim, skype, irc, and text sms that Matthew Ingram wrote about the same topic yesterday. His article is here. I guess I am not alone with my views or he is not alone with his views.

When have we gone too far? When Justin.tv launched, I started to ask myself this question and again looked at my 2007 prediction that we will spend more time offline than in 2006. First we had chats such ad MUDs where people used virtual worlds to chat with other people. I remember using it in college to talk with other buddies about girls we liked. There might have been something before this but this is the first I remember.

I also can think back to the days of calling into a BBS. Oh how much money I spent on several BBSs over short periods of time.

Then we moved to the world of IRC where chatting was a 24×7 process. Bots, fighting, takeovers, etc. and we learned more and more about people. Multiple networks showed up and now even include the Dateline NBC show on online fraud. Of course there was also AOL chat with thousands of rooms. I remember speaking with many people who would not go to sleep just to not lose their nicknames.

Then we moved to instant messaging. First one I remember hitting it big was ICQ. I had a very low number that seemed to get me some street cred when I gave it out. It was a good app as it brought people together in new ways. You could communicate with people directly without the channel crap. It was more secure.

Then AIM came along and owned the market for a time. And so and and so on. And don't forget the first webcam channels. Those were classic.

Then Geocities came around (and now MySpace) that let us have our own little space online. Today sites such as MySpace, YouTube and blogs allow us to create our own world where people can peek into our lives.

Cell phones now do pictures and video and get us the best shots of news events. YouTube made us all movie directors and brought us as close to live as we have ever been.

Now we have twitter. Pete calls twitter the ultimate cat blog application. If you use it for your personal life, I find many times there is just too much information. I don't care that you are walking your dog, or that you are putting up a new Boys II Men poster on your bedroom wall. If used effectively, twitter can be a good networking and group tool. But knowing that Jason just came back from a 30 minute walk is not necessary and just shows fan boy necessity.

Now I see UStream.tv has gone full steam ahead. What does it do? It let's you stream yourself using a webcam and a laptop and a wireless/wifi internet connection. So let me ask my question again… when have we gone too far? You can watch video blogger Robert Scoble walk around Web 2.0 Expo. I hope he remembers that he is live. Will people be reluctant to speak to him since every single word is being captured for all eternity? I know on my interviews, many of the interviewees ask to do a retake at least once during the interview. And will the Ron Popeil's of the world flood this new medium with every ginsu knife and rotisserie? How will spammers use this new medium or is it spammer-proof?

Why is there a need to be connected at every minute of every day. Michael Arrington took a day off and felt bad about it. Are we setting a new standard that you must be completely live 24×7 365 to be successful? Remember, we are the ones that moved (and accepted) the work day from 9-5 to 24×7. We started it, we have accepted it.

Maybe I am right and all of these live shows are just a fad and people will remember that not everything needs to be televised. Or maybe I am wrong and this is the new TV. Forget watching friends that is scripted… just watch xyz person and their live friends show every minute of every day. As hard as it is, sometimes it's nice to get out in the fresh air (or the NYC nor'easter we have here). There's my rant/thoughts/ramblings for today :) Feel free to bash.

Alrighty, so everyone and their mother have covered Justin.tv. My friend Jeremiah did a video interview with Justin and has about 40 facts that people may not know about Justin. SFGate also has an extensive piece about Justin.tv. Josh at Cnet has a writeup as well. So here are some of my thoughts and comments.

1. Who the F cares?

People are hooked on this now… but will they in a month, in a year? I doubt it. I also doubt that Justin can do it for a year or more. Naturally since he is in San Fran, he will get invited to every party, be on every video show, etc. But once it's done once, will it keep up? I question the longevity. But Justin will be a nice rich Yale graduate before it's all done. Can't fault him for that.

2. Is it really a live twitter?

So we know that twitter allows us to post when we poop, post when we date, post our cat photo. Justin.tv is a live version of this. Why read that you just took out the trash, when you can watch it!

3. This is like a live Big Brother

Big Brother's tv show (seen in many countries) is very addicting. Why? Because people want to see the fights, the drama. Will Justin.tv be able to provide that "drama" in some fashion? Seeing Justin eat his cheerios or put on his underoos won't keep the audience coming back over and over. Now give me a fight between Aisylene and Imogen and I will watch all day!

4. Archive

This show needs an archive. In say thirty-minute segments. This is a Tivo generation. We need to be able to rewind, fast forward, pause Justin's life. Oh yea, and add some Viddler timed tagging/commenting love.

Final Summary

In the end, it's good fun. It's like the milliondollarhomepage, it will work once. Actually it will probably work once for a woman as well. But that's it. If I strap a camera to my head, no one will watch.

Are you watching? If so, why?