Justin.tv Opens Free API, Slashes the Cost of Live Video Applications

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Justin.tv, the largest online live video community, today announced the release of its open API. The API makes key pieces of the Justin.tv technology and infrastructure available for free — a customizable live video player, a customizable live broadcaster, live chat, user data and video archive data. Live video applications have never been easier or cheaper to create.

“Archive video growth has exploded in the last five years to the point that it has become a standard part of the daily Web experience for virtually everyone, and we think that is in store for live video”

Justin.tv has built an incredibly high scale, cost-efficient network to serve live video. The Justin.tv network has capacity for 100 million hours of video viewing per month. That is about 2.5% of Comcast’s network capacity, and it costs only 0.05% as much money to run each month. The cost savings allows Justin.tv to provide an API without charging developers. Free API’s have become proven models for jumpstarting use case expansion — Twitter, Facebook and the iPhone are just a few examples of wildly successful API’s that have defined their products in recent years.

“Archive video growth has exploded in the last five years to the point that it has become a standard part of the daily Web experience for virtually everyone, and we think that is in store for live video,” said Michael Seibel, CEO of Justin.tv. “Live video has the potential to be far more powerful, but that requires more flexibility and cost efficiency than developers have been given access to. We’ve built that system for ourselves and the API lets us share it with everyone. We think the community of developers will help push live video to every corner of the Web.”

The API provides deep integration opportunities that have never been surfaced by any live video provider. Developers can not only access data about existing Justin.tv streams, but also fully customize the live player and broadcaster to create an application and experience all of their own. Users never need to interact with the Justin.tv website and developers never need to worry about replicating the work of building Justin.tv’s network.

For more information on Justin.tv’s API visit http://justin.tv/p/api

About Justin.tv

Founded in October 2006, Justin.tv is the largest online community for people to broadcast, watch and interact around live video. With more than 41 million unique visitors per month and over 500,000 channels broadcasting live video, Justin.tv is the leading live video site on the Web, enabling users to create real-time connections with others around the world. Headquartered in San Francisco, Justin.tv is funded by Y Combinator, Alsop Louie Partners and Draper Associates.