Live from your mobile. The next big thing?

What would happen if everyone, anywhere, could have their own live television station from a mobile phone? The BBC has an idea.

“A number of services including Qik and Flixwagon, are competing to make “live” the next big thing in web video, and YouTube is poised to introduce its own live service.

… Eran Hess, the chief executive of Flixwagon, has made a deal with MTV which has seen the station give phones with Flixwagon software installed to what it calls “Street Journalists” to cover the primaries in the United States.

Their clips are shown live on the web - whether it’s an Obama victory speech or vox pops with New York voters - and some make it onto MTV itself.

Eran Hess also revealed that he had just done a deal with an Israeli news channel which will supply similar phones to citizens in the towns of Sderot and Ashkelon where rockets fired from Gaza have been landing.

So a phone and a piece of software - and a 3g network - are you all need now to start putting your message across to a live audience. It promises to give new vigour to the whole idea of citizen journalism, and poses a challenge to existing broadcasters.

Because of course these citizen journalists are not bound by any code of taste, decency, truth or impartiality, which could give their broadcasts a dangerous, edgy quality which might appeal more to viewers than the professional version of television news.

Welcome to a future where everything may be televised - live. I’m not entirely sure I like the idea.”

On Qik you can watch and listen to Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, filmed by Robert Scoble for Fast Company.

http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/2008/03/019375.htm