App lets its users broadcast live video

2013-05-25 05:00:03

Andrew Maltin doesn't get why people dole out news 140 characters at a time on Twitter. In his eyes, that news is already old, and the character limit compresses how much information can be shared.

That's part of the reason he built a new social networking platform, Hang w/ (also known as Hang With), around live video broadcasts no longer than 3 minutes in length. With the app, Maltin can go to a youth league baseball game and point a smartphone at his kid to broadcast live video to anyone he wants to see it. On the screen of his phone, Maltin can see a stream of text comments left by viewers.

Users can approve or deny those who follow them, and broadcast only to those followers.

"My feeling is that live will become the most authentic medium for social media," said Maltin, whose app development company, MEDL Mobile, is based in Fountain Valley.

Hang w/ has 200,000 users since it launched on Apple's iTunes app store in March, MEDL Mobile says. That includes celebrities such as actor Jamie Kennedy and music producer Timbaland. The service should launch in the next few days on Android, potentially opening up a far larger market.

The early user base for the social service leans heavily toward exhibitionists who broadcast live video of themselves hanging out in front of the camera – chatting with friends, listening to music, having a glass of wine, smoking outside or putting on makeup. In some cases the broadcasts push the limits of what Apple allows (no nudity) and MEDL Mobile's own decency standards. Its staff watches videos as they go up and can kill those that cross the line. Also, users can "flag as inappropriate" a video, alerting the monitors.

The social-network universe is crowded and getting more so every day, and hard data on adoption can be sketchy. But for comparison's sake Instagram, a photo-sharing service, sold to Facebook last year for $1 billion after launching in October 2010 and drawing 1 million users before the end of the year.

Maltin and business partner Dave Swartz started MEDL Mobile in 2008. They balance work-for-hire projects – such as their most downloaded app last year, a photo manipulation toy to promote the hit movie "Ted" – with their own app ideas, like Hang w/.

Now that social networking platform represents MEDL's biggest bet to date, and the company is in search of investment to expand it. Maltin answered questions from the Register.

Q How would you explain Hang w/ simply?

A It's Twitter meets YouTube. It's the ability to broadcast live short bits of information.

I think it's much easier to understand than Twitter. I think people definitely understand taking videos. Once you can say to them "you're taking a video and broadcasting it live and are able to interact with your friends and family at the same time," people get it pretty quickly. I think Twitter, still, to me, is very hard to understand.

Q Why would I want to broadcast myself to people I can't see?

A People really enjoy being on a stage. People really enjoy showing people what they're doing and talking to the camera. It's got a very journalistic feel to it. People are finding their channels, in a sense. Think of it as a massive cable network and each individual has a channel that they're starting to develop. And some people are starting to go down that path – there's a guy in jewelry always showing really neat jewelry, a guy in cars showing off neat cars. People will find their place here.

People are addicted to our platform now. It's fascinating. People sit and watch people they don't even know.

I thought people would come on and you'd only follow people you'd really want to watch. I'd only follow my wife, friends and my (interests), and I'd get a message, "Hey, come watch me live," and I'd go watch them. Now we're finding people don't want to be private, they want to broadcast publicly. They want to be on stage.

Q Some of the things people are broadcasting are fairly risqué – how are you dealing with that?

A We had to build an entire monitoring tool that we didn't have, which was something we expected to (need), but we didn't expect it to happen this soon. We're learning that people like watching random people. I never thought somebody would want to watch some random person out in the world.

We monitor it 24 hours a day for anything that's pornographic or inappropriate or doesn't go with our code of conduct. The new iteration of the app will have better channeling.

Q When did you first have the idea for Hang w/?

A The idea for Hang w/ started about three years ago with a celebrity who came to us and said, "I'm spending so much time and money and resources to build my social media network." We pitched this idea, which was a way for you to broadcast your own life. This celebrity would have this one-off app, and he would broadcast his life, and people who were following him could follow him.

Then we said, why don't we make a social network? Why don't we let anyone follow anyone?

The privacy piece only came about when we ran into our original beta. People said to us we're not willing to broadcast unless you have privacy. It turned out to be a very small percentage – I think right now the percentage of people who broadcast privately is 5 percent or less. (But) it's an absolutely necessary function.

Q How do you plan to make money?

A For every live broadcast, there's an advertisement pre- and post-broadcast. Right now we're just building our user base and conditioning people that ads are coming – there's a little countdown timer (where the ad would be) when you go to watch somebody. (We'll split the ad revenue with the broadcaster, and to draw celebrities we're making deals to give) them a higher percentage.

Q Are you looking at Google's new "Glass" smart eyewear as a potential platform for the service?

A We think Hang w/ is one of the killer apps for Google Glass – the ability to watch what other people are doing and the ability to broadcast as you're seeing it.

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