SUNNYVALE, Calif. - YouTube plans to launch a live video service featuring real-time streaming on the Web this year, co-founder Steve Chen said.
Chen said he is optimistic about the service, now that YouTube has Google's financial backing.
In a videotaped interview at a New York YouTube party, Chen told Pop17.com that he had always wanted to offer live video but lacked the resources. That has changed, since Google's acquisition of YouTube in 2006.
"We'll do it this year," he said. "Live video is just something that we've always wanted to do. We've never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually launch something this year."
Yahoo! launched the similar Yahoo! Live this month as an "experimental release." In addition to showing webcam-generated video streams from users' computers, Yahoo! Live offers developers an application programming interface for mashing up live video streams on a site or client application. The API uses REST, or Representational State Transfer, an XML-based protocol for invoking Web services over HTTP.
A unique feature of Yahoo! Live is that it allows viewers to see other users who are watching the same video if their webcams are linked to the service. The service also offers live chatting while a video is playing.
