Marketing Pilgrim

Late last month, rumors abounded that Yahoo was launching a “lifecasting” site, Yahoo! Live. And last night, Yahoo indeed welcomed a new arrival to the family as Yahoo Live went live.

Unfortunately, while they did launch last month in closed beta to Yahoo employees, Yahoo Live has already begun experiencing serious problems. Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb reported that while lifecasting the Yahoo Live launch, once more than give people started watching his video stream, they began having serious problems. At the time, the service had only a few hundred participants, but received an influx of visitors from Twitter and suffered a nervous breakdown began malfunctioning.

However, Marshall still had some big positives for the service, which he seemed to like on the whole. Marshall believes that live video is on its way up. Another major plus for the service was that they had the Yahoo Live API ready to launch as well.

Yahoo acknowledges that this release is an “experimental” one in a blog post. They also state that the product was developed in six months and that there are only a handful of developers working on it. While these factors can certainly inhibit any new service, they’re probably also something Yahoo should have taken into account when planning the launch date. On the plus side, they really seem to want your feedback, and have made an effort to reach our to users on Twitter and their blog.

Perhaps once they get the kinks worked out, this’ll get Andy back on MP Live. Who’s in favor?