IP Democracy: New Social Networking Frontier: Live Webcasts

The next big thing in social networking is live video webcasts, a logical progression in this hot phenomenon that was all but inevitable. The New York Times’ Brad Stone has this piece today about the new trend of swapping not just photos and comments, but also live videos, with friends and connections.

One rising social networking site, Stickam.com, is capturing attention for its feature that enables users to transmit live videos of themselves and participate in live video chats, something that can’t be done on MySpace or Facebook or even YouTube. Although many of the live chatters on Stickam appear to be blatantly hawking sexuality, the site does claim in its rules to bar nudity and will kick out any user who violates this prohibition. Stickam also contends that it will report to the authorities anybody who exposes sexually explicit material to minors.

Moreover, and I hear this a lot from web video companies, Stickam argues that video is safer than static material because, well, it’s difficult for a 45 year-old man to impersonate a 16 year-old boy on video.

Mr. Kihioka of Stickam [Hidecki Kihioka, CEO] said that in some respects, his site was actually safer than other social networks. Live video feeds let users “know who they are talking to,” he said. “Unlike MySpace, it is hard to disguise yourself.”

But, because of the live nature of the video chats, policing the unauthorized activity is difficult, raising a fresh crop of new concerns over the safety of social networking for minors. Stickam’s potential for abuse scared off MySpace, which blocked the service last fall (Stickam started out as a video chatting service geared to MySpace), but it hasn’t scared off big media companies.

Warner Brothers used the live video aspect of the site to transmit webcam feeds of two of its artists last month, drawing 9,500 viewers who engaged in chats with the perfomers during breaks. The commercial uses of live video on social networking sites smells to me like a major thing — live performances, live celebrity video chats and so forth.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on January 2, 2007 8:25 AM to IP Democracy