First, for those of you who are unfamiliar, Stickam.com is a live streaming video community. It’s a place where you can go to stream live video, join interactive group video chats and more. They were the first…and generally considered the largest…video streaming destination on the web.
Now here comes the interesting part.
Stickam recently announced that they are giving away “the keys to the kingdom” as they call it…that they are supplying an API to their services.
What that means is that now anyone can integrate Stickam services directly into their web site, blog or social networking account.
For example, let’s say you want to stream live video directly from your site. You can now do this with the Stickam API. But honestly, that’s no big deal as you’ve long been able to stream live video on your site through services like ustream.tv.
What is a big deal however, is that you can now add group-based video chats and live, classroom style video presentations to your web site, blog or social networking account too.
This means, for example, if you have a dozen people reading your blog at one particular point during the day, they could all optionally video chat with each other…and you…at the same time. Of course it doesn’t have to be a blog…this can be done your web site or Facebook account too.
Or you could also do a live training presentation…where you appear through live video as the instructor and all of your viewers or “students” appear through live video too. And again, this could be done through your web site, blog or social networking account.
And the biggest kicker is…at least for the moment…it can all be done at no cost to you. You don’t have to worry about bandwidth, hardware, software and so on…everything is being supplied by Stickam for free.
The drawback? Well, this is an API. That means you need to be a programmer to code all the stuff so it works in your site. Or, you can simply hire a freelance programmer for cheap (from sites like rentacoder, guru, getafreelancer, etc.) and have it all done for you.
In any event, I believe you’re going to start seeing more and more of this video-based user interactivity on web sites…particularly the new media and social media type of sites. And I also believe that early adopters will ultimately profit from it.
To learn more about Stickam’s new API…and see a video where they demonstrate what you can do with it…just click here.