In what we consider a milestone in the syndication of live online video news, CNN has introduced a widget for its live streaming service.
Still in beta and not yet available through the company’s webmaster tools,
it is being used on an invitation basis by key bloggers and Web sites.
The Huffington Post has recently integrated the widget to stream live
campaign events.
The widget is a dynamic thumbnail which is updated frequently. Users click launch and a player pops up without redirecting them from the site. A 15-second
pre-roll begins, followed by the streaming video of the top story
selected by CNN editors. Users can select other live streams.
At CNN.com, the consumption of live streaming continues to grow.
Monthly streams have averaged 4.3 million, according to internal
numbers provided to Beet.TV. That number will surely grow this month
with the Beijing Olympics, the Democratic National Convention and the
Republican National Convention.
Also this month, CNN began to provide embeddable code for video
clips. It follows msnbc.com, Reuters, Fox Business News and others who
have this functionality. The files seen on msnbc.com or
cnn.com carry no in-stream advertising, but CNN Live does in the form
the 15 second pre-roll. Monetization and hypersyndication!
For more live coverage of the national political conventions, you should check out uStream. We just learned the Level3 will drive live video from the convention.
— Andy Plesser, Executive Producer
