YouTube seeks to be the pioneer and king of live streaming

The platform recently announced ‘YouTube Live,’ which offers users the opportunity to share current happenings with viewers from their mobile devices.

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The platform unveiled “YouTube Live,” a feature that “will offer you an entirely new, more intimate and spontaneous way to share your experiences with your communities.”

YouTube announced the move—and reminded people it offered a live videos before Periscope Facebook Live and Meerkat even existed—in a company blog post:

We’ve been offering live streaming on YouTube since 2011, before it was cool. Millions of people around the world tuned in to watch the Royal Wedding in 2011. One-sixth of the Internet watched Felix Baumgartner leap from space live on YouTube in 2012. And just this year, we became the first to ever broadcast a 360-degree live stream during Coachella. Over 21 million people tuned in to watch Coachella on YouTube this year—almost twice as many as tuned in to watch the season finale of American Idol. Today, we are announcing a new chapter in bringing the power of live video to creators everywhere. Soon, we’ll be putting the power of YouTube live streaming in the palm of your hands.

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