Microblogging platform and social media network Tumblr is the latest to join the live video streaming bandwagon, as it announced the new feature landing today, Tech Crunch reports. The announcement can be found at livevideo.tumblr.com, which also shows a schedule of live streaming broadcasts (live stream from Mars, anyone?).
It is still unclear whether Tumblr's live video streaming feature is positioned to compete with Facebook Live, Amazon's Twitch, Google's YouTube live streaming, or Twitter's Periscope. However, the platform can definitely bank on creative content from millions of its users. The Verge reports that the site has as much as 555 million monthly visitors across its 300 million blogs.
In addition to Tumblr's new live video streaming capability, the platform is also introducing a user-facing feature for live video. They are also cooking up something huge for their real-time content strategy, following their inability to generate the $100 million sales target that parent company Yahoo set back in 2014.
Mashable recently published a lengthy story about Tumblr's struggles to meet the incredulous $100 million sales target set by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who in the beginning of the Tumblr acquisition promised that she would not "screw it up" for the users of the widely popular microblogging platform. A former Yahoo executive even went on to say that Mayer was "just picking a number" when she publicly announced their $100 million sales goal.
"Tumblr built strong communities, launched Internet memes, led to countless book deals and helped shape the culture, online and offline. It remains an incredibly vibrant network with hundreds of millions of accounts spanning the full breadth of human interests," Mashable's Seth Flegerman wrote.
How live video streaming will play into Tumblr is yet to be seen in terms of impact and revenue, but users can definitely count on a variety of attention-grabbing content, as today's broadcast is already promising basketball lessons from a Harlem globetrotter and a Q&A session with Brooklyn artist Adam J. Kurtz.
Check out the broadcast schedule here.
