Justin.tv guys launching new mobile video app Socialcam | Hacker News Reader

Justin.tv guys launching new mobile video app Socialcam

socialcam.com

99 pointsjustin29 comments

These guys are very impressive, and that they are so innovative around video is really nice.

The Justin.tv guys really took off after they closed down Kiko. I think that this goes to show that the wrong market and the wrong concept can hold back people, but once they are in big growth markets, creative people really get to shine like these guys have been doing for the past years.

Just the sign-up referral thing is pretty innovative. I referred one person and I'm #26 on the list, so at least 25 people have referred at least one other person? That's not bad.

Just the sign-up referral thing is pretty innovative. I referred one person and I'm #26 on the list, so at least 25 people have referred at least one other person? That's not bad.

To be fair, the waiting list with referral incentives was discussed a couple weeks back. It appears that a startup called Forkly started it, and then the infamous hipster popularized it.

Ref: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2096406

I'm curious as to why this necessitates a new app. Justin.tv is a pretty strong brand, why not wrap this functionality into the existing app?

Not that I would do it differently, there's dozens of reasons, but it's a blog post I would want to read.

New year, new brand.

In all seriousness, I promise we will explain this later.

Justin.tv has been revolutionary in terms of online video. It'll be pretty cool to see what they have in store for next.

I'm no expert on video-streaming, but what sets them apart from ustream.tv and livestream.com? Were they the first people out there?

as I understand it, jtv has a more active and dedicated community and more user generated content than the other sites. ustream and livestream seem to have more corporate partnerships, more big events streamed live, but jtv has a more loyal fanbase and following of users.

I love Justin.tv. I just discovered their live streaming section, which has everything from office episodes to television stations I don't get in my area (I've been practicing my Mandarin Chinese by watching a station in Toronto)

This is probably the samething as instagram but for videos...

The word "Socialcam" looks a lot like "Socialism."

Do people disagree? You read words by looking at the whole shape, and it has the same shape. I thought that's what it said when I first saw it.

I didn't down vote you but I'd imagine the down voting wasn't for disagreement with you, but rather, because your statement doesn't seem to add much value to the conversation.

I think that it adds value to the conversation, because one of the reasons why the link is featured here is to discuss the branding.

I read "social scam" in the HN entry. I only realised it was "social cam" when I actually clicked on the link (after I read a few of the top-ranked comments).

I read social scam as well!

There's room for a parody I guess.

They should stick to products like this. I'm wondering what will happen to justin.tv after the upcoming UFC court case ? Or will the case go the way of Viacom vs. YouTube ?

i used to go to justin.tv and view the highlights of justin's day. pretty cool, but how would this work with my friends? fun to see things come full circle.

Awesome!! cant wait!

can't wait for this app =)

nice to see people getting over overhyped web2.0 'companies'

Is that sarcasm? I think Justin.tv's guys have made some realy progress as far as online video goes. They're pioneers. I'm sure they have some great stuff planned for mobile!

yeah they have developed pioneering technology but they failed to build a profitable company, which is what matters if you take funding and present yourself a company.

come on, we all know that at the end of the day you have to make money.

Welcome to the current world of web 2.0. Justin.tv will either figure out how to become profitable or will be bought out by an already profitable company. Probably the latter, but time will tell. Either way their technology is worth millions and that would be a hot sell.

I have a lot of respect for Justin.tv's founders/team. If you're going to be pessimistic, please be pessimistic because of a valid point. HN is a great community and I really enjoy the people who post on here...I want it to stay that way!

I said nothing about the founding team, and I hope their next project will work out great, but video streaming bandwagon (which started with justin.tv) is defacto overhyped and underperforming industry. anyways, goodluck.

in terms of revenue underperforming, of course it grows like crazy because everybody uses it to stream paid tv channels. go on google and search for soccer games that are not broadcasted on free channels and you will see the growth. anyways, i dont see a point in this discussion anymore.

i am out. (btw, keep downvoting :) )

As someone who funded them, I disagree with you. What investors are looking for is scale combined with profitability. Often the best way to achieve that is to optimize for scale first, as Google did.

It's easy to "build a profitable company." Just start an unambitious service business with low costs. But it is much harder to start from that and add scale than to start from scale and add profitability.

It's also pretty easy to create a large scale business by taking shortcuts like streaming copyrighted content. Look at Grooveshark, Stage6, or any of the hundreds of popular torrent sites.

For someone who's used to creating normal web products it's shocking to see how fast a site can grow with copyrighted content.

It's not "make something people want" it's "give people what you already know they want but can't get for free".

Why not just wait and see what its all about before we knock it down? It could be a revolutionary new way of sharing experiences. I for one am optimistic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com