YouTube Goes Live

YouTube is now going beyond the usual by offering its videos on live-streaming.

The site’s executives unveiled YouTube Live on Friday, featuring integrated live-streaming capabilities into the YouTube platform.

In its blog, YouTube announced:

“Today we’re announcing the initial roll out of YouTube Live, which will integrate live streaming capabilities and discovery tools directly into the YouTube platform for the first time. This begins with a new YouTube Live browse page (www.youtube.com/live), where you can always find the most compelling live events happening on YouTube and add events to your calendar. Subscribe to your favorite YouTube live-streaming partners to be notified of upcoming live streams on your customized homepage.”

Starting Monday afternoon, viewers could already watch live games from Indian Premier League Cricket and a Stanford University lecture on the impact of the tobacco industry on global health.

However, the new feature is yet to allow everyone to live stream videos on the site. The company has worked that out with a select list of partners, but YouTube is hoping to grow that list in the coming months.

“We’ll also start gradually rolling out our live streaming beta platform, which will allow certain YouTube partners with accounts in good standing to stream live content on YouTube. The goal is to provide thousands of partners with the capability to live stream from their channels in the months ahead. In order to ensure a great live stream viewing experience, we’ll roll this offering out incrementally over time. Partners interested in learning more about the livestream experience can check out today’s on the Partner Communications Hub,” wrote YouTube’s Joshua Siegel, a product manager, and Christopher Hamilton, a product marketing manager in the same blog post.

Meanwhile, enjoy YouTube’s new live videos here.