The prevalence of text messages, RSS feeds, status updates and tweets underscore the desire people have to connect with the greater global community in real time.  News, information and entertainment are spreading across the internet 24-hours a day and everyone is attempting to digest that information, while maintaining a social connection with the people around them.  In the meantime, companies are falling over themselves trying to provide the forum to view content and interact with that greater community.

Recent events, including Obama’s inauguration, the Iranian protests following their recent election, and the startling death of Michael Jackson have demonstrated internet users want real-time access and live video streams so they can view this content and engage around it with their peers. Recent trending topics on Twitter including the #iranelection and #michaeljackson’s shocking death reveal staggering statistics at just how many users are participating in this real-time social collaboration phenomenon. NewTeeVee stream statistics from the November 4^th election day, reveal that CNN had more than 25 million streams in the 12 hours surrounding the Obama inauguration, with 1.3 million concurrent live streams just before Obama’s address.  The live stream coverage of Michael Jackson’s memorial service generated  81 million page views, 11.8 million unique visitors and 9.7 million live video streams, according to CNN.com.

Furthermore, Ustream is at the forefront of the live streaming phenomenon, attracting hundreds of thousands of users to its website for various kind of live streams, ranging from personal events to political coverage, including Obama’s recent speeches at the G8 summit, once again demonstrating that there is a powerful demand for real-time broadcasting. Along with other live stream services, it  continues to push the concept that the future of TV is web TV.

In the past few months, a new wave of real-time synchronization has swept the web, enabling users  to share content without having to download or upload files, without having to contend with skipping or buffering and paving the way for a quick, easy and seamless online experience.  The first site to enter the space was Watchitoo, when it launched into beta earlier this spring, which was quickly followed by announcements of similar offerings, from  Google Wave, Skype Screensharing, Opera Unite, Facebook’s Live Stream Box, and Microsoft Office 2010.  However most companies dealing with real-time technologies, social networking, and content sharing, do not integrate everything into one multifunctional platform. Other sites don’t offer collaboration that is on the same level because users cannot share the synchronized content and maintain the social networking component simultaneously.

Watchitoo is the first, real-time collaboration platform (patent-pending technology) that goes a step beyond many content-sharing and live video-streaming sites. Watchitoo is the closest thing to actually sitting next to a friend while viewing content online.  It fuses together all the popular platforms available on the web by merging content sites, social networks and instant messaging.  By creating a portal that allows users to draw from content sharing sites, upload their own content, and view it simultaneously, Watchitoo builds a social network around the content and enables users to engage in real time conversation with other users.  Watchitoo provides the natural evolution of social media and the next era of content sharing by taking the most popular uses of the internet and combining them. This allows for a real time social collaboration between parties, ultimately marrying the experience of sharing content and being together by doing it all online.

Ride the Real-Time Trend Wave and Watchitoo!

~ Hila Raz