Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

YouTube can now deliver live TV to a global audience at the same scale as TV. But the future of live Web video is probably going to be niche, not mass.

That crazy leap that Felix Baumgartner made was astonishing.
And if you’re interested in the future of Web video, YouTube’s ability to serve up eight million livestreams at the same time is a really big deal, too.

As I noted yesterday, that number blows away YouTube’s previous peak of 500,000 concurrent streams, which it hit this summer during the Olympics, as well as last year during the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

So it doesn’t take much imagination to envision YouTube doing this kind of stuff, at this scale, on a regular basis. Which would mean the Web finally has a chance to rival TV when it comes to serving up live events with huge audiences — one of TV’s last remaining advantages over the Internet....

But YouTube is still going to be an important platform for live stuff. It’s just that you probably won’t see most of it, unless you’re in a very particular niche....

[Interesting perspective on TV & social TV from mega big events to mini niches ~ Jeff]

20-somethings switch between media 27 times an hour...

With the explosion of content and conversations, younger people are filtering in real-time, sometimes consuming and creating simultaneously. To date, filtering technology is rather primitive, especially compared to the human brain. But one of the goals of social TV is to act as a real-time discovery tool, elevating engaging content and meaningful conversations automatically....

"Social TV" is another game changer for business and public relations.

The breakneck pace of change and the convergence of TV, video, social media and mobile have big implications for public relations, marketing and social media....