Oprah is the Real Social Network
A lot of new internet TV station startups are in the wind these days and there's a question about how they can scale their broadcasts. Today's state of the art shows you can't yet mimic the reach of broadcast TV with internet tech. But as Oprah proves, you can still capture a lot of eyeballs, if you are Oprah...
Oprah drew a stunning 500,000 simultaneous viewers for an Eckhart Tolle webcast. Move Networks and Limelight Networks hosted the "broadcast" where traffic peaked at 242Gbps. A variable bitrate scheme was used so depending on their connection, a viewer could have seen 150Kbps or as high as 750Kbps.
Dan Rayburn thinks The big take away from this webcast is that it shows proof that the Internet is not built to handle TV like distribution and those who think that live TV shows will be broadcast on the Internet with millions and millions of people watching, it's just not going to happen.
To handle more users comments suggested capping the bitrate at 300K, using P2P streaming, or using a CDN more specialized in live streaming.
I went to Oprah's website and was a bit shocked to find she didn't have full blown social network available. Can you imagine if she did? Oprah's army would seem to be a highly desirable bunch to monetize.
