The Huffington Post launched “HuffPost Live”, a new way to interact with their readers. Arianna Huffington describes it the following way:
Producing more original video has been one my top goals for HuffPost for a couple of years now. That’s why when our founding editor Roy Sekoff and Gabriel Lewis, who was helping HuffPost ramp up our video production, came to me with their idea for HuffPost Live — a streaming network that would use HuffPost’s stories, editors, bloggers, and commenters as its real-time script, I knew we had found the right vehicle for bringing HuffPost’s voice, attitude, and disruptive approach to video. [via Arianna Huffington].
Interestingly it comes back to the early communication visions Flash Communication Server (now Adobe Media Server) pioneered 10 years ago, by providing a platform for users to visually interact with each other with their web browsers. Adobe Media Server even includes advanced P2P capabilities such as RTMFP, very similar to to what the WebRTC initiative is trying to achieve as part of the native browser.
As it turns out, Adobe Media Server seems to be part of the HuffPost live viewer feedback recording workflow with Flash Player’s webcam recording feature.
A great way to close the gap between traditional and social media – especially since social media seems to be reporting new events quicker than traditional media now, and visual appealing social media aggregators such as Flipboard getting more traction.
