The Lifestreaming panel discussion at Stanford I mentioned last week took place yesterday. Kara Swisher, who moderated the panel, has posted a video (embedded below) and interviews from the event.
Apart from her repeatedly using the term Lifecasting as opposed to Lifestreaming when discussing the event, it was also a bit annoying to see her press the monetization issue with each speaker. I understand that the business model is important for the future of these services but this concept is still maturing and that shouldn’t be the primary focus right now.
Bret Taylor said it best “…this is a new product category…the bigger challenge is figuring out what is the product that will go mainstream…more than how does one competitor beat another competitor…it’s still in the arc improving stage, not the competition stage”. I’m so glad FriendFeed is focused on making the best product and knowing that once they get there they can tackle the monetization issues.
Jeff Clavier also pointed out re: monetization “I’m not certain right now is the time…it’s too early in the adoption, broad adoption to figure it out”.
Leah Culver discussed how there’s plenty of room in the Lifestraming area for many niches and how the key to broadening adoption is lowering the barrier to entry. I couldn’t agree more.
I can also never get enough of watching the raw passion exuded from Loic Le Meur. It was fun watching how he engaged with Kara. Loic never dissapoints.
Here’s the video
You can read more about the event at Kara’s post Debating the “Real-Time” Web at Stanford University
Update:
