Recently, 19-year old Abraham Biggs Jr. committed suicide in front of a live audience on the popular web video streaming service Justin.tv. The event has caused public outrage, both at how something like this could happen at all, as well as the reaction of the viewers, many of which did nothing or even encouraged Biggs in his actions.
But, as always in an event such as this one, there’s also the question of whether Justin.TV and its administrators could have done anything to prevent the tragedy, and Florida police are looking into it.
Justin.tv has deleted the video and the related comments, so it’s hard to determine who of the viewers said what at this point. Biggs’ father told the Associated Press that he cannot believe that no one tried to help his son. Some of the viewers, however, claim that they tried to get help from moderators who basically did nothing until it was too late.
How much blame, if any, lies on the admins of the site is to be determined by the police. However, it is notoriously hard to decide whether situations such as this one are real or mere pranks. Death threats, suicide threats, and similar behavior is common on many web forums; I’d even go so far as saying that people who frequent forums (let alone admins) are desensitized to this type of behavior and are very unlikely to react to it. Hopefully, this case will bring some guidelines on how to react in situations such as this one, and possibly prevent further tragedies.
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[Editor’s warning: many of the links in this story lead back to the original sources of the drama. We've decided not to embed them in-line and thus left it to you to view. Viewing them might be disturbing for some readers. Please be advised.]
In a tragic story from NewTeeVee, we learn that a 19-year-old user of the online live-streaming video service Justin.TV has apparently commit suicide in front of an audience of fellow forum dwellers egging him on during the process. The death has been confirmed with the Broward County medical examiner and the timeline has been pieced together from several different forums that have chronicled the unfortunate series of events.
Most of the participants, as well as the deceased Abraham K. Biggs, were denizens of steroid information forum bodybuilding.com. Biggs, also known as CandyJunkie on the forum and Feels Like Ecstasy on Justin.TV, is alleged to have been a “well known troll” on the forum. He created a thread in the “misc” category yesterday afternoon detailing the amount of drugs he’s going to take with the intention to kill himself.
The moderators of the forum didn’t take his threats seriously “on account of his past trolling,” and other forum members continue to egg him on. At that point, Biggs posted his suicide note, which conveyed a general sense of depression and disappointment with life, not necessarily motivated by any hardship or cyber-bullying he may have received online.
At that point, Biggs turned on his Justin.TV channel, took the pills and laid down to go to sleep on his bed. After an unspecified amount of time, one forum member in particular from India became concerned by Biggs’ lack of movement and hunted down the actual name and location. He then pleaded with the forum to call the Miami-Dade police department, but was met with cynical replies declining to intervene on account of his “troll status.”
After several unsuccessful emails by the forum member to Miami-Dade police, he borrowed his father’s mobile and spoke to a number of policemen who didn’t take the call seriously, but directed him to the Broward County Sheriff’s Department.
Approximately an hour later, Biggs’ door was busted down and BSO and paramedics arrived on the scene. After quickly confirming his status, covered the camera.
This Isn’t a Result of Cyber Bullying, but the Behavior is No Less Atrocious.
We’re no stranger to covering suicides that take place with a large social component, and as chilling as it may be, this sort of thing will cease to be headline news in the future and actually be regarded as commonplace.
In 2004, students of Japanese culture were shocked to learn of online suicide clubs amongst the youth there. Over the the summer, I covered here at Mashable a series of suicides that were highly documented by virtue of their Bebo pages.
Children and young people committing suicide is not new. Doing it in full view of the public by virtue of their social networking profiles or even live on camera as with Biggs is. This is simply a side-effect of our always on culture.
It’s easy to look for bad people or the misbehaved as scapegoats, and in this particular instance, there is plenty of blame to go around. A screen capture of the chat room next to Biggs’ camera shows a shocking disregard for his feelings and of human life in general. Those of us who’ve been denizens of the Internet for any length of time know this is nothing new.
Events such as this are bait for politicians and empathetic impetus for well-meaning citizens alike to come together with righteous fury for social change and try to either pass a law or convict a suspect to “right the wrong,” “find justice,” and “prevent it from occurring again.”
I won’t pretend to know the pain of Biggs’ family, or any other family of a suicide victim, but as I said in the aftermath of the Bebo Suicide Cult, technology isn’t the demon here, only a conduit for the symptoms. It is the portal that can allow us assist our loved ones and perhaps spot a tragedy like this some distance off. Social media and social networking is meant to facilitate real live human interaction, which in the case of the depressed and suicidal can be what the doctor ordered.
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Yahoo has announced that it will be shutting down Yahoo Live, the company’s attempt to cash in on the live broadcasting trend popularized by startups like UStream and Justin.tv. According to the Yahoo Live blog, “… we constantly evaluate our early-stage products and sometimes have to make the hard decision to move on, in order to continue exploring new territory and developing new products.”
The service first debuted in February this year, with a few novel features like offering up simultaneous multiple streams (though competitors quickly followed). Nonetheless, live video isn’t cheap – especially when you’re on the scale of a company like Yahoo. After persistent rumors that it would enter the live video space, Google said that it would not be adding the feature to YouTube anytime soon because of the huge bandwidth costs that would ensue. And Google is in a much better financial position than Yahoo at the moment.
So, while the shutdown of Live could be viewed as a Yahoo problem – the company is in the midst of layoffs with its stock trading near multi-year lows – there has to be some concern over the implications it has for live streaming on the whole. While some of the startups in the space have shown decent traffic growth over the past year, if Yahoo wasn’t able to attract a big enough audience to make it work, you have to wonder if the other, considerably smaller companies pursuing the niche will find enough users to make a real business of it.
On the other hand, the shutdown could simply be a part of broader cost-cutting at Yahoo, and not necessarily a verdict on the state of live video. Allen Stern reports that the company might have also shuttered Yahoo Kickstart, a career site for students and recent graduates.
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Is Google-owned YouTube backing out of live streaming video because it’s too expensive? It would appear so, at least according to Michael Learmonth of Silicon Alley Insider. While it’s hard to fathom that any service would require more capital than Google is willing and able to spend, according to Learmonth’s sources, the cost of adding live video would be enormous – a 20 to 25% increase in the company’s infrastructure costs if only 10% of YouTube users adopted the service.
Considering YouTube’s huge user base in comparison to startups like UStream, Mogulus, and Justin.tv, that certainly sounds plausible. 
There’s also the fact that YouTube is still sorting out its own monetization strategy, so adding more costs and advertising inventory certainly isn’t a priority on the march towards profitability.
Meanwhile, YouTube staying out of the space should be cause for celebration at the live video startups. In a poll we conducted back when YouTube was seemingly poised to launch a live video offering, 69% of our readers indicated that YouTube would likely become the most popular video streaming service. On the other hand, Google staying out of the market also sends a statement that they don’t necessarily think live video is worth an investment at this time.
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Is Google-owned YouTube backing out of live streaming video because it’s too expensive? It would appear so, at least according to Michael Learmonth of Silicon Alley Insider. While it’s hard to fathom that any service would require more capital than Google is willing and able to spend, according to Learmonth’s sources, the cost of adding live video would be enormous – a 20 to 25% increase in the company’s infrastructure costs if only 10% of YouTube users adopted the service.
Considering YouTube’s huge user base in comparison to startups like UStream, Mogulus, and Justin.tv, that certainly sounds plausible. There’s also the fact that YouTube is still sorting out its own monetization strategy, so adding more costs and advertising inventory certainly isn’t a priority on the march towards profitability.
Meanwhile, YouTube staying out of the space should be cause for celebration at the live video startups. In a poll we conducted back when YouTube was seemingly poised to launch a live video offering, 69% of our readers indicated that YouTube would likely become the most popular video streaming service. On the other hand, Google staying out of the market also sends a statement that they don’t necessarily think live video is worth an investment at this time.
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Starting today, Stickam is allowing beta testers to charge for events broadcast via the live video streaming service. Dubbed PayPerLive, the service allows the host to schedule events and sell tickets, which can be purchased by viewers through PayPal. Stickam takes a share of the revenue generated from ticket sales – starting at 25 percent.
While hardly a new concept in traditional broadcasting (PayPerView television has been around for decades), the business model being attempted by Stickam is a novel one in the live online streaming space, 
at least among immediate competitors like Justin.tv and UStream, the latter of which recently began testing overlay ads in live video streams.
The move points towards Stickam looking towards a different audience than we’re currently seeing with most online video streaming. For example, educational courses, business seminars, and live entertainment like music and comedy are some of the types of live content the company envisions being monetized with PayPerLive.
Of course, there is also the risk that Stickam becomes a haven for do-it-yourself adult-oriented peep shows - a proven successful model for monetizing live video. That’s likely part of the reason that for now, the service is invite-only, though I’ve asked the company for details on how they plan to address the adult content issue and will update accordingly when I hear back.
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While pop stars’ fortunes these days are heavily dependent on building an online fan base, the reverse is even more true. Social media sites are tripping over themselves to score the one celebrity who will shower them with rabid fans.
I’m surprised to see how often the words “The Jonas Brothers” show up in my inbox. And no, it’s not because I’m signed up for their fan club alerts or anything like that. It’s because these guys are huge. Their magical combination of luscious locks and mediocre crooning have captured the hearts of young ladies everywhere. And outside of their day jobs as Hanson 2.0, they’re also the poster children for any number of social media services.
The first time I heard about the band was last October, when Justin.tv told me the brothers were by far their most popular users, helping the startup to secure venture funding from Alsop Louie. As I noted then: “Up-and-coming band the Jonas Brothers has been the biggest hit to date, with 80,000 uniques and a maximum of 14,000 simultaneous viewers turning in for a live chat last week.”
Then a couple months later I got a pitch from widget provider Nabbr: “Nabbr has delivered more than 28 million video views in two months for the Jonas Brothers and helped their first single, ‘Mandy,’ reach No. 4 on MTV’s TRL with virtually no radio airplay.” Now it’s hard to find a startup that isn’t hawking some tie-in with the band. This week I talked to Uber, which just concluded a contest for the best Jonas Brothers fan page created with its tools. I also heard from Bebo and Kyte, who are teaming up for the official Jonas Brothers UK launch with a contest that will see the winner attend a live concert held on a bus as it drives around London. It will be broadcast using Kyte on Nokia N95s.
Wait a second, doesn’t Kyte compete with Justin.tv? These guys can’t be everywhere, can they? Well, it doesn’t appear that they’ve updated their Justin.tv channel in the last 10 months (though the chat room hasn’t stopped; members there are still arguing over which brother is cuter). And they started posting actively on Kyte about three weeks ago.
Meanwhile, back at the official Jonas Brothers home page, they don’t mess around with the all the social media flavors of the month; there are only links to Flickr, MySpace and YouTube. The Jonas Brothers have made a pretty big indent on the heavyweight YouTube: Their channel is the No. 6 most-subscribed channel of all time, and the band is ranked as and the No.1 most-subscribed-to musician of all time.
Much can be attributed to the fact that the teeny-bopping superstars actually use these services. Give fresh, original content to your fans and you can bet they’ll come back for more. Live-streaming, blogging, and contest-holding is invasive and exhausting, but feeding people’s obsessions is a remarkably easy formula for success. And having young fans doesn’t hurt, either. As Uber founder Scott Sassa notes, “[The Jonas Brothers] resonate with an audience that has the aptitude and the time to spend on social media sites.”
But scoring a celebrity user is a difficult game of relationship-building, evangelizing and luck. The hottest stars will always be in the highest demand, and there’s no easy system for figuring out whether your best bet is the celebrity, or their label, manager, promoter or PR company — and if any of them will actually call you back. And celebrity fairy dust isn’t unlimited; even the Jonas Brothers (and their staff) can’t use every single service.
Live streaming video service BlogTV is now offering its live shows on mobile phones.
The new mobile site from BlogTV m.blogtv.com offers live streaming to most mobile phones without the need for a plugin (I’m presuming it’s flash based, because it doesn’t work on my iPhone.)
BlogTV claims that their mobile streaming services is the first of its type available for mobile phones. The mobile version includes the host stream, cohost and chat feed, fully replicating the normal BlogTV experience.
Mobile services such as this do rely on decent data plans that aren’t always available everywhere, but in the ongoing battle of live streaming supremacy, it’s another positive addition from BlogTV following their ICQ deal January 30.
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