YouTube is the sleeping giant of Live-streaming

Periscope, Meerkat, Twitch and others are making their bones in live-streaming. But the big dog, YouTube, has very quietly been honing its tools in the background.

This is a key advantage for YouTube: Since it already has such a popular platform, all it has to do is tweak the interface and settings a bit, and people will start to discover live video. Unlike Periscope and Meerkat, Blau points out, live is just another feature for YouTube. (Same goes for Facebook, too, he points out: “If Facebook comes out with a live video app and that’s all that it does, I still think that’s a feature of Facebook.”) Since it’s a different feature and not a different platform, he says, live could gain traction on YouTube much more quickly than it has elsewhere. It’s just another button, after all.

And:

YouTube has quietly spent the last few years building the pieces to be a livestreaming monster. It has a new generation of stars, people viewers want to see even when all they’re doing is talking to the camera. It has rock-solid infrastructure, and a platform everyone already knows and uses. It has ways for Fox Sports to run commercials and make money, and ways for any random person to turn on the camera and talk to the world. And maybe most important, it has so many other things going on that it can wait for live broadcasting to really catch on, which is probably going to require better wireless bandwidth and improved cameras.

A few weeks ago, I watched President Barack Obama deliver a eulogy at a church in South Carolina. I could pause and rewind, and talk with people all over the world as we experienced the event together. When Obama started singing “Amazing Grace,” I knew I’d be glad to have been there when it happened—and all I did was click a Twitter link. This is social, it’s real-time, and it’s available anywhere I want it. Soon enough, YouTube’s technology will allow creators to add commercial breaks. It feels a lot like the future of TV.

There’s real value in being the incumbent. Everyone is already familiar with YouTube and the platform is mature and universal.