| URL | blogTV.com |
|---|---|
| Slogan | You're Featured! |
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Video chat |
| Registration | Optional |
| Available language(s) | English Russian Hebrew German |
| Owner | blogTV.com Inc. Tapuz People Ltd. |
| Created by | Guy Eliav Nir Ofir Oren Levy |
| Launched | 2006 |
| Alexa rank | 11,996 (January 2012[update])[1] |
| Current status | Active |
blogTV is an online video service. blogTV began in June 2004, in Israel, and was a pioneer in the webcasting industry. Its goals were to supply anyone and everyone, with internet access, a way to express their talents & ideas to the world and to socially network with people face to face. In 2006 blogTV expanded and opened its Canadian equivalent, blogTV.ca. After seeing great success in Canada, blogTV.com was officially launched in June 2007 to America and the rest of the world. Users can create live video shows, interact with their audiences or invite co-hosts to join their show over the internet or by using WAP. The broadcaster can broadcast to its audience with a webcam. The platform also includes a chat system. The site has a promotional partnership with ICQ which is an IM type platform.
Contents |
In February 2008, blogTV launched the first live User-generated content for mobile phones. Handset owners can watch live content that is being produced and broadcast on blogTV.com.[2]
On April 16, 2008 blogTV launched a "new season" with updates to the viewing platform such as personalized user pages. It also announced a series of new users including Christine Gambito, Michael Buckley, Phillip DeFranco, Kevin Edwards, and Mike Mozart.[3]
In July 2008, blogTV launched its Russian sister site.[4] Worldwide blogTV has a partnership with ICQ, ICQ also established a promotional partnership with the blogTV Russian sister site. ICQ is an IM platform widely used in Europe, Israel and in Russia. The sister site, has its on personal community manager much the same as worldwide blogTV.
In December 2008, blogTV began its Video Ad Revenue Share Program. With certain criteria to apply, such as a need of 10,000 views from all of your combined videos, $100 of ad revenue must be made to receive the product. Only certain people may be able to be a part of this program but it could still produce 50% of the ad revenue generated from live shows, videos and embedded shows.
In February 2009, blogTV gave introduction to a new type of account, Pro. This type of account allows users to navigate beyond the usual free account features at the cost of $24.99 a year. This newly introduced account allows users to host private shows, generate new emoticons, more recording space: up to 30 minutes per recording (500 minutes total). A recent feature has been added to gift your friends the pro status, the cost of the account remains the same and you are given the choice to gift a pro account as yourself (sharing who is gifting the account) or you can gift the pro account anonymously.[5] SUP On March 4, 2009 blogTV released the junior channel type. This is for users aged between 13 and 15 years of age. The junior members can only broadcast to other junior users (13-15 year olds), junior members can only view junior member's profiles, guests are not allowed to enter the chat room, and no co-hosting or inviting a co-host is allowed. Other features for the junior members include no private message options, there will be no way to change the age of a junior member to change their age into a regular member account type. For the regular members they are also not given the right to change their age to a junior member profile (to watch other junior members). blogTV Community Manager, Kara Hannah Tells the Site Users: "Each of these features was put into place with the well being of the junior members at heart and absolutely not done in order to remove privileges from our younger friends. We hope that this new junior channel will allow our junior members to safely enjoy their time on the internet and will allow our older members to mingle with more people in their own peer group."[6]
On July 16, 2009 Karen Alloy aka Spricket24, a well known YouTube celebrity, went into labor and gave her fans live updates during her delivery. It has been declared as blogTV's very first live birth. Incredibly, despite hospital restrictions preventing a video feed, the live text chat had over 400 viewers. Lulu Augustine Alloy was born 22", 8 lbs, 12 oz at 11:22 p.m. CDT.[7]
On September 16, 2009 blogTV launched their 1.0 version of their toolbar. On June 29, 2010 the site released its 2.0 version of the toolbar, with many more features, Currently the toolbar is only available for Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and the Firefox related browsers with the ability to use Firefox Add-ons Epic Browser and Wyzo.[8]