On Monday and Tuesday this week, YouTube tested a live streaming service, the likes of which is intended to compete with services like ustream.tv and justin.tv.
The tests were performed with live streams from Howcast, Rocketboom, Next New Networks and Young Hollywood. Based on the results of the tests, they will examine rolling the service out to additional partners…and perhaps eventually…to average-Joe users.
Although there are firmly entrenched competitors already in the live streaming market, YouTube dwarfs them in terms of traffic…by some reports, owning up to 80% of all video traffic. In other words, YouTube has much longer and stronger arms, should they choose to enter the live streaming market.