I’ve only used the very new Y! Live service a few times so far. It has a few odd bugs and eccentricities but on the whole it seems like it’s going to be pretty cool.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I followed a Twitter link from well known video blogger Steve Garfield to his Y! Live channel. I couldn’t get my audio to work straight away but it was still a nice surprise to find not only Steve with an available webcam, but myself and many others too. I guess I was expecting to have to text chat with him while he was on camera.
The next day I joined (supergeek, heh) Eric Rice at his channel while he was testing it out, along with many others. This time I managed to get my audio working and I stayed for a couple of hours, video chatting to various people moving in and out of the channel. It was a lot of fun – a very lively atmosphere.
Now that I’ve experienced it, I realise I’ve been waiting for this kind of service. It seems like a next step from live video streaming services such as Ustream, Mogulus and Kyte.
As many of you know, I’ve been using Seesmic regularly and really enjoyng that. I’ll certainly continue to use it. Seesmic is quite different from this new service, as it’s not live and only one person can speak at a time. The conversation flows smoothly because everyone gets to have their say without being interrupted by others.
Y! Live seems more like real conversation, with people talking over the top of each other. You can turn down the audio for each person though, and remove them if desired. It does have the more traditional text chat as well, which adds an extra layer and allows people without webcams to participate. You can only (only!) view five other people at a time too, so the text chat is a necessary element.
It’s funny, even with multiple webcams on display, I immediately wanted to see more. If there are more people in the room than places in the camera tray, you have to choose who you watch, and you can’t tell who other people are watching. This aspect is confusing and more than a little frustrating.
This is what the site says about about the new service:
We tip our hats to Justin.tv and Ustream.tv – they were an inspiration to us and have created awesome services and built strong and loyal communities. What you’ll see in the coming months from us is a series of new additions to Y! Live which will make it more useful as a platform for broadcasters and developers. Our vision for Yahoo! Live is to create a platform for live video. Stay tuned.
Let’s hope this is turns out to be the case. Whatever happens, I’m going to try to take full advantage of the service, at least for now. It’s been a lot of fun so far. I hope to see you there soon : )
