YouTube has hosted live events before, but now it’s launched a dedicated section to live video. More interesting, YouTube is rolling out a live streaming platform, “which will allow certain YouTube partners with accounts in good standing to stream live content on YouTube,” explains a blog post about the launch.
We’re a bit surprised it’s taken this long, but now YouTube is taking on the likes of UStream and Justin TV. With 2 billion video views a day, YouTube has the potential to make live events scale to large audiences right out of the gate — especially when it promotes (like today) live events on the home page. And you can bet they’ll surface in Google, too.
What’s even more interesting to us is how this will tie into TV. As YouTube ramps up its efforts to extend onto TV sets, you can imagine how live YouTube events could be integrated into program guides, with alerts tied to social media.
YouTube says it plans to roll it out to “thousands of partners” in the months ahead.
Plus: YouTube has 22,000 partners with “hundreds” making six-figures