Rhinobird.tv Merging Live Video, Social Media

Rhinobird.tv, a video streaming service that says it “brings together the power of live video, the reach of broadcast and the connection of social media,” is now available as a public beta.

Unlike many apps born from Silicon Valley startups packed with big VC investments and exit speculations, Rhinobird.tv  says it comes from a group of people with a background in civic-oriented technologies, “who are on a mission to democratize broadcasting. Focused on people-driven live-streaming, Rhinobird.tv is the only service to allow anyone to experience an event in real time from multiple angles with zero latency.”

Co-founded by Harvard Fellow Felipe Heusser and winner of the 2012 Knight News Challenge, the service sees a future where news and everyday life stories can be told among peers, without having to wait for traditional broadcasters on TV.    

How does it stand out?

• Zero lag time. Built on WebRTC, it streams real time with zero lag, enabling multiple views of live streams. Other live streaming apps like Periscope or Meerkat deliver video to viewers with an average lag of 20 seconds, according to Rhinobird.tv.

• No app needed. You can start broadcasting without an app or plug-in from any WebRTC-enabled browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, among others) on PC, Mac, Linux or Android.

• On Android now and iOS soon. For app lovers, Rhinobird is also available from Android’s Google Play and will be available on iOS later in 2015.
•  
• Mobile and desktops. Users can broadcast from both their mobile and desktop devices.

• Easy to share across multiple platforms. When going live on Rhinobird, users can instantly go live on Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. Seconds after recording you’ll have a permalink that can be downloaded and embedded anywhere.

• Open motion. It uses WebM, one of the only truly free and open video formats. The code is vastly available in Github.

• Never miss a live event. You won’t miss the action, you can find and watch live-stream or recorded content when you need it.

• Get the bigger picture. Experience events such as graduation, a marathon, a concert or a football game from multiple viewpoints, all in a single Web page. Rhinobird introduces collaborative broadcasting.

• You control your content. There is also no time limit on videos and users have the ability to control what gets stored or completely destroyed.