Y! Live, Yahoo’s new streaming video service, launched last night and thanks to my resident early adopter, I was there to watch it all unfold. As I watched hundreds of people from around the world broadcast their own live video streams and chat to each other, I realized that something very important was happening.
Y! Live isn’t the first live videostreaming chat site, but with the reach of Yahoo to back it up, it will definitely be the one to grab the Facebook crowd. But first it’s got some serious privacy and user control issues to deal with.
While sites like Collab, Seesmic, Ustream, Qik all offer live streaming video for users, there was something about the chaotic, random ramblings of last night’s broadcasters that made me think that a shift was about to happen.
It was like watching a series of youtube rants, but unedited, live and interactive. Users would shout out their opinions about anything and everything and respond immediately to something another user had said. Watching these channels was like listening in on other people’s phone conversations as they found friends online, talked about where they’d meet up later and what they’d get up to. All this streamed live around the world to anyone who is logged in and listening. But it isn’t just users like me listening and watching. Yahoo are there too and they are recording every bit of video and line of chat. Forever. And, right now, there is nothing users can do to delete that data.
When I realized that the video and chat I had created and broadcast was now permanently part of the Yahoo servers, I got nervous. At the moment, there is no way for users to delete their chat logs or video snapshots. Once it’s up there, it’s up there for good and for anyone who knows your channel name to see.
With growing concerns over the amount of data people are giving websites like Facebook, I’m predicting that smarter web users will choose the alternatives mentioned above if they feel the need to broadcast to the web. Although I think Y! Live will implement more user controls as the site moves out of ‘experimental release’, I don’t think they’ll be deleting much of this precious data users are willingly sharing. Much like Facebook’s woefully pathetic ‘hide’ feature, once this breed of 2.0 corporation get their hands on our data, they won’t get rid of it without a fight. And when you’re having fun streaming your thoughts to the world, who has time to fight?
Another reason to sign on to the Social Web User’s Bill of Rights.
