 "LiveDigital Offers UGC on New Web Platform")
Media community, LiveDigital, has unveiled its user generated channel and video programming platform, to allow users to design, program, and brand their own ‘Internet channel’.
LiveDigital.com will enable its users to harness videos, uploaded by others and program them for public viewing. Each month, the portal will have a ‘Sweeps’ period’, and will split the projected advertising revenues among the top 25 channels. The user-driven advertising and revenue sharing contest, which launches on February 1st, will give channel producers the chance to compete for $25,000 in cash.
The user interface will allow LiveDigital Channel viewers to watch multiple video clips without leaving the main Channel page, for a more engaging and easy to use viewing experience. Viewers can simply click on the video thumbnails displayed on the right-hand portion of the screen to begin playing a completely different video.
Sumant Sridharan, Director of New Media for LiveDigital said, “We believe that video sharing and hosting technology has become a commodity on the web. Most of the top video sharing sites host the same popular videos. The real talent is how to present media in an entertaining way that will engage users for a longer period of time. LiveDigital is the first online experience of its kind to bring this ability to program entertainment to the masses. We are no longer limited to a few hundred channels that are available on satellite and cable TV. Anyone can easily create a channel, broadcast it, and make money. Our active community will tell us which channels have the highest entertainment value and these channels will receive the most exposure — this is the phenomenon of ‘bottom-up’ programming.”
Through this platform, users will be able to take over all facets of entertainment programming, including content management, design, advertising and promotion, and even statistical analysis. Channel producers will have the option to show advertising on their respective channels. Like television, the channels that serve more ads and have higher viewership, will incrementally earn more money.
Channel programmers will be required to use LiveDigital’s set of enhanced technology features to add, edit and organize new content from anywhere on the web and ‘brand’ their channel by customizing its every aspect with LiveDigital’s AJAX-based Theme Editor. Programmers may also send custom newsletters and updates to channel subscribers, allow others to contribute to their channel and monitor channel performance statistics with a built-in traffic monitor so they can increase their channel’s popularity by giving their viewers what they want to see.
To assist viewers in navigating LiveDigital, each Channel is sorted and placed into one of 16 LiveDigital Networks including BoomBox (music), MotoZone (racing and automotive), Hollyweird (entertainment and gossip), LDLOL (comedy), Life (home and garden), X-Stream (outrageous and extreme), WTF (seemingly random clips), Sci-Tech (science and technology), Game On! (video and computer games), Animal Haus (animals and nature), Animation, Play by Play (sports), LDOG (original LiveDigital content), International and NewsCore (current events).