I have been following both Ustream.tv and Justin.tv since they launched last year. They are both great sites, however, it is amazing how blatant Ustream copies Justin.tv's interface. Almomst every time Justin.tv comes up with some cool redesign for its site, Ustream.tv eventually copies them. Yeah the color schemes are different, but Ustream is stealing the principle layout of Justin.tv's redesigns. Take a look for yourself. Ustream.tv just launced a new version of their site. Now compare that with the current Justin.tv site. That should speak for itself.
Maybe this is one of reasons why Ustream is so far behind in terms of traffic. As a lot of you may already know, building a website without unique design principles, usually puts a site in perpetual cathup mode. And you never want to play this game with a competitor.
"We eventually had many competitors, on the order of twenty to thirty of them, but none of their software could compete with ours. We had a wysiwyg online store builder that ran on the server and yet felt like a desktop application. Our competitors had cgi scripts. And we were always far ahead of them in features. Sometimes, in desperation, competitors would try to introduce features that we didn't have. But with Lisp our development cycle was so fast that we could sometimes duplicate a new feature within a day or two of a competitor announcing it in a press release. By the time journalists covering the press release got round to calling us, we would have the new feature too."
The problem with Justin.TV is the illegal content - the NBA Finals, etc. can't stay there forever. It can't survive on that - it'll get crushed. uStream's content is higher quality and legal.
Of course, maybe its legality just doesn't matter on the net.
In the case of youtube it seems most copyright owners tacitly accept the presence of their material, probably because they recognize the promotional value.
It's a weird situation now where people casually link to illegal material, like a Family Guy episode or a clip from Office Space, and nobody even blinks.
Maybe this is one of reasons why Ustream is so far behind in terms of traffic. As a lot of you may already know, building a website without unique design principles, usually puts a site in perpetual cathup mode. And you never want to play this game with a competitor.