NEW YORK (Aug. 11, 2009)--Livestream today opened its industry-leading live and linear video streaming platform by releasing several powerful APIs, thus enabling the Livestream service (Free or Premium) to be integrated into in-house or third party online video platforms and players.

The Livestream Player API enables customers, programmers, and web agencies to build their own Livestream powered video players and clip libraries using HTML, Adobe Flash or Adobe Flex development environments. Other Platform API's released today include the Live Publishing API, Guide API, Account API and Chat API.

Livestream Plug-in for Brightcove

The first key initiative utilizing the Livestream APIs was spearheaded in partnership with industry powerhouse and leading online video platform, Brightcove. Livestream and Brightcove jointly developed a plug-in that gives Brightcove customers the opportunity to instantly stream live and linear video via Livestream into their existing Brightcove player.

"Livestream is an important partner for us as we look to meet the increased demand for high quality live streaming among our global customer base," said Chris Johnston, director of technology partnerships at Brightcove. "In partnering with organizations like Livestream, we're able to provide customers with seamless access to a broad feature set for live publishing, distribution and analytics."

Brightcove customers who wish to use the Livestream platform to power their live streaming or 24/7 linear broadcasts can use the player plug-in for Brightcove, available now. The plug-in integrates seamlessly within any Brightcove player template, thus providing the same user experience and leveraging the monetization, analytics and asset management already in place with the Brightcove platform. (More information available at http://www.brightcove.com/en/partners/livestream )

In addition, Livestream is developing plug-ins for popular open source video players, including Longtail Video's JW Player, Adobe Strobe and Flowplayer.
(For more information, availability details and online demos

Early Player API Adoption

In the last several weeks alone, Livestream's APIs have borne important fruit. The APIs helped bring Twitcam.com, the first of its kind product, from the concept stage to a live product in less than a week. Twitcam.com enables users to stream live video to their Twitter feeds, and chat with just one click.

Just days before the launch of Twitcam.com, C-SPAN used the Player API to create a custom, multi-channel player that provided viewers multiple camera angles for its online coverage of the Supreme Court Nominee Judge Sotomayor confirmation hearings.

In addition, the Livestream Player API was used to create a custom, branded and viral Flash video player for the recent Mandela Day Concert that could be embedded as a widget on any Web site or social network.

More information on the Livestream APIs - including sign-up, documentation, live examples and downloadable code