Y! Live Blog

Aug

New Features: VIP, Ignore, Mute

By efixler 1 Comment

Categories: announcements

We get lots of feature requests from people who want more control over who can chat in their channel. Today we started releasing new capabilities to address this.

Ignore: Don’t want to see someone’s messages? Ignore them.
Mute: Don’t want anyone to see someone’s messages in your channel? Mute them.

You can ignore or mute people by clicking on their name in the Who’s Here list, using the menu that pops up. You can ignore anyone you want at any time (if you’re logged in); muting is only for channel owners, in your channel.

You can manage your muted and ignored people just like Favorites: hit the Settings link in the top menu bar.

We also added a new way of using chat that only lets the people you pick chat in your channel. We’re calling these people VIPs. You can add or remove VIPs from inside your channel, or from Settings.

All new Yahoo! Live channels will be in VIP-only mode by default. If you want to make your chat room open to all, VIP-only, or close it entirely, you can do it in Settings.

For more info about VIPs, check the cheatsheet.

Just for the the record, we also added some more colors to chat messages, and made chat scrollback less infuriating. We’ll be refining these features over the next few weeks; let us know what you think in the comments.

Aug

BRB

By misstillytilly 1 Comment

Categories: townhall

Due to some scheduling conflicts the Y! Live townhall has postponed for this week. But fear not! We will be back on, Wednesday, August 20th @ 3:00pm

Later Gators!

Aug

Wed August 6th Town Hall Postponed to 3:30 PM PST

By efixler 0 Comments

Categories: townhall and uncategorized

…to accomodate an event at the office. See you there at 3:30!

Aug

“Blacklisting” and the Popular Channels Page

By knowland 0 Comments

Categories: blacklisting, listings and popular

There’s been a lot of discussion lately surrounding the Popular Channels on Y!Live, and what many of the Y!Live users are interpreting as “blacklisting”. We thought we’d try to clarify a few things, and give some pointers as to how you can have your broadcast show up in the popular listings. For starters, we’re not blacklisting people. However, for users who have been banned for behavior that does not fit with our TOS, we’re not just automatically allowing them to show up in the site listings. That doesn’t mean that your broadcast isn’t live, or that people can’t chat in your channel, it just means that we’re not advertising your broadcast. Here’s some thoughts from the Y!Live team around “what broadcasts are likely to stay in the popular listings and what will most likely result in not showing up in listings or being banned”. We want everyone to have fun, and what some people consider fun, others consider not.

Things to do to show up on the Popular Listings Page

Do something interesting:
- Broadcast your job (radio DJs, restaurant)
- Broadcast a road trip
- Broadcast an interesting view (a skyline, a zoo)
Come up with original content:
- A puppet show
- A talk show
- Singing, acting, etc.
- Have a debate with someone
- Review music or TV shows or movies
- Surprise us!

Reasons you won’t show up on the Popular Listings Page (and/or get “Blacklisted” or Banned)

Just coming up with channels to attack
Going into channels with the express purpose of abusing the broadcaster
Sitting around talking about fapping
Just broadcasting someone else’s material (TV, movie)
Porn
Showing parts
Demanding other people show parts
Sitting around trying to do things for “teh lulz”
Using language that you know isn’t appropriate (the N-word, etc.)
Naming your channel or username to be things that you know isn’t appropriate
Encouraging behavior from other users that will lead to things on this list

At this time, we can’t respond to requests to be included in the listings. However, we are watching the site, and channels that meet the above criteria will get restored to the listings.

Now maybe the things listed in the “how to show up on the popular listings page” sound boring to you. But the reason we came up with the idea of Y!Live and the ability to broadcast yourself was so people could showcase what they’re doing, or seeing, to an audience.

We appreciate that some of you just want a forum for hanging out with your friends and talking smack. That’s just fine (so long as it doesn’t violate the TOS to the point where we need to ban you). But that’s not likely going to get you up in the popular listings screen.

Think of it like the difference between “The Office” and something on cable access. Not hating on cable access, just sayin’.

PS - Our “townhall” is tomorrow at 3pm Pacific Time in the LiveNao channel: http://live.yahoo.com/livenao

Jul

Town Hall Word Cloud

By efixler 0 Comments

Categories: townhall

Put together by our own Cool Keith T. Thanks!

Jul

Best.Townhall.EVAH!

By misstillytilly 3 Comments

Categories: townhall

I feel like the latest Y! Live Townhall session might have been my favorite so far! Not only did we get some more really great feedback from you guys, but we also got to play with puppies and go on a small tour of the office! If you didn’t make it this week, you totally missed out! But don’t worry; let me recap what we went over.

The first thing we should get out of the way is the Null error issue. That should be all jet set now, the team launched a fix for that bug so you shouldn’t be seeing that message pop up at you anymore. If you do come across it, please let the team know and they can squash it.

And now for some of the fun suggestions that you guys brought up! I especially loved the idea about maybe designing custom interface skins and adding in emoticons! It also sounds like people are requesting that we add more windows into the viewer’s tray? Cool idea, but if we did that, it would take up a whole bunch of resource for your computer and become a total bandwidth hog.

We also gave you the offer this week that if you start broadcasting a really cool show, we will give you free goodies! Just drop us a line (ylive at yahoogroups.com) and let us know the date and time you were planning on going live and the type of content your going to broadcast, and we will check it out and send you an item from our super hot Summer ‘08 Y! Live clothing line!

See you guys next week!

Jul

Wednesdays are Live Nao!

By misstillytilly 4 Comments

Categories: uncategorized

Thank you guys for another awesome Y! Live Town Hall session! Sorry this weeks broadcast was all choppy and full of lag. Turns out that the laptop we were running on (mine of course) was set to go through too many interweb tubez and caused the stream to get all clogged up. Problem solved, and next weeks show should run easy breezy!

But even through the crappy quality, you guys brought some awesome feedback to the table! Some of the big things that were discussed is the idea of introducing moderators, or perhaps a way to invite users to your channel personally and give broadcasters the tools to keep any riff raff from ruining their live experience. Rest assure that the team is busy as we speak brainstorming ideas on how to make the community more safe to use, as well as keeping things fun and open.

The idea that I loved the most was about possibly having a Y! Live meet up! If you broadcast your party, I promise that the team here would be stoked to hang out and watch the event! And like I said, if you are ever in the bay area, drop us a line! We are totally down for hosting a shindig here if your interested in getting the chance to meet the team that runs things behind the scenes.

See ya next week! And if you had an idea that wasn’t directly addressed during the meeting, always feel free to drop it on the suggestion board! We always look forward to hearing from you!

Later gators!

Tilly

Jul

Amnesty

By efixler 0 Comments

Categories: announcements

We made Yahoo! Live so people could have fun with their cameras. Different people have different ideas of fun, and that’s cool, but some things are never fun in our book. These things include, but are not limited to, racism, harassment, porn, violence, and anything illegal. We just can’t tolerate that stuff on Yahoo! Live, and we’re certainly not providing the service for that. We’re going to blacklist and ban people who we think are making it difficult for others to be on the site.

That said, some of you who are currently blacklisted may want to keep using Live with your friends more than you want to keep doing that stuff. If that’s the case, send an email to ylive at yahoogroups.com, with contact info (IM or phone, no email please), and we’d be happy to get in touch for a chat.

Don’t forget to join us at 3 PST for the town hall!

Jul

chickam2008 I <3 U

By efixler 0 Comments

Categories: broadcasts

One of my favorite Yahoo! Live channels is chickam2008. There’s no indirection, bait-and-switch, or rickroll going on here: It’s a bunch of baby chicks, keeping warm, growing, and clucking a bit.

I had to wake up ridiculously early yesterday, so I checked the Live home page, and was happy to find my little poultry there, completely oblivious. I double-clicked on the video to make it fullscreen (a secret/imperfect Yahoo! Live feature), and enjoyed my breakfast accompanied by the soothing sound of chicks.

I just have one small message for my favorite flock of chicks: When you grow up, please don’t forget the people who helped make you famous. We don’t want much — just a few fresh eggs from non-factory chickens, with their thick greenish shells and bright sunshine yolks. I know how good they taste, and I’d really like a few, please. I know you’ll have some to spare.

Jul

You talk, we listen!

By misstillytilly 4 Comments

Categories: events

Heya! Allow me to formally introduce myself. My name is Tilly and I hang out here at the Y! Live Lounge. Over the last month, the guys here have not only supplied me with all the snacks I can nibble on, but every week they also let me broadcast and chit chat with ya’ll! Have you gotten the chance to catch one of our Town Hall sessions? If not, you totally should. Each week, Wednesdays at around 3:00pm, the team gives you, the broadcasters and viewers, a chance to interact and give feedback directly to the gang here that created and runs this entire site.

In just 2 meetings, ya’ll have already given the team all sorts of awesome input and brought up some really great questions. Let me just covered a few issues that have been brought to our attention, and see if we can finally clear the air.

The word filter system: Yea, kinda sucks, but I think we all know why it’s needed. Until we find a way to curb the language and terms that are used, unfortunately it’s a necessary evil.

Cutting back on font colors: Personally, I think this one is a little silly. Previously we offered users a TON of font color options to use in chat, but since we are using black as the chat background, some of the colors we offered were a bit too dark and hard to read. We still offer a range of 18 beautiful colors, and really? Did you need 873450 different shades of purple?

The missing Recently Live tab: Again, another case of a couple bad users ruining things for the whole class. But don’t worry, there is still the Who’s Live tab that you can hop over to and check out what hot on Live.

But no need to fear! Not everything discussed in our meetings is such a downer, a lot of really cool features have been suggested as well!

Chat scroll: For real, I totally feel ya on this one. We know the issue, it will be fixed, sorry it’s not as fast as people want. I promise you, the developers are definitely cooking up some cool ideas on how to make chat easier.

More privacy options: This is a concern that everyone here is very aware of, stay tuned, I think your gonna like what they came up with to have more control over your channel.

Mobile streaming: This might be the coolest idea ever. It’s a pretty big feature, so don’t expect a solution overnight, but that totally one of the directions that the team here would love to see things go!

Keep in mind that Y! Live is still in beta, and a very new project. As with any new site, there are gonna be some bugs to work out, features to implement and kinks to smooth over. I just want to honestly thank you for your support during our growth period, and let you know that the team here is truly excited to create new things that will make Y! Live not only the coolest place to hang out online, but also the most fun. Just remember, the community will only be as rad as the content that you broadcast. So get out there and take your life live!