Ustream.TV in an attempt to improve the interface for listeners and those of use using the service have caused a large number of content creators to cry out in protest of some of the changes.
During my Live event last night, all of the listeners where complaining about the new chat interface. In fact I could not participate in chat at all last night as the chat auto scroll was broken. Plus as part of the change I can no longer chat from the Broadcast Console it forces me to a separate web-page. This is problematic as I have 20+ tabs open on every show making it impossible to follow the chat.
The biggest issue I have with the changes is that when I am not streaming it is impossible for someone to watch my previous show from my video page here at Geek News Central. In order for people to watch an archived show they get driven back to the Ustream.TV website versus being able to watch here at Geek News Central. Plus the videos they are presented are the oldest versions. Which is really stupid.
One of the worst things is that visitors to my site no longer can quickly watch my previous episode which will result in lower revenues for both me and ustream as they cannot show any more ads to my viewers.
Another big issue is that Ustream is now promoting other shows that I do not approve of in my player window, whether I am live of off line on Geek News Central. This is a big issue why would I want to promote shows that I do not endorse!
On the Ustream site on my once personalized show page they are promoting other shows as well, which is frustrating, because as I visited over 20 shows that Ustream.TV was promoting on my show page and non of those show pages were promoting my show in reverse. This is BAD BAD BAD BAD as these shows get free advertisements on my show page and I don’t get any return love.
Are Geeks coming to my site going to want to watch some an Owl Cam? How in the hell can that be a recommended show?
It is obvious that they are working very hard to keep people contained within the Ustream.TV website but they have effectively destroyed my ability to build my live show on my own website. Because the player on my dedicated video page does nothing but drive people away from my site and onto Ustream.TV website.
Try make.tv it is far superior than any other video broadcasting service, to check out what it can do goto
I have two problems with the new ustream.
1. I liked to search for streams that just started, fun to catch people when they first come on. Now the “most recent” is those who just signed up to ustream, not those who just started a broadcast.
2. Chat. Using IE7 I can only see the chat box sometimes, on some streams. Most times the chat box dissapears when I try to use it. Did not do that before the upgrade.
i’ve stopped clicking links to ustream. i’ve given up on trying to get it to work so i just don’t click the links anymore.
Personally I like the new design. I was not a big fan of the old Ustream site as it seemed like a clunky site from the 90’s.
Definitely need to get the bugs fixed, but I like the direction.
I would also like to add that Ustream removed the ability to popout the video into a separate window. I used to popout the video and push it to my first monitor and have my irc client on the second.