Within the last year the free streaming service Ustream.tv was acquired by IBM. Nothing really changed at first, but within the last two weeks a lot has changed. To start off, the company changed the name of their streaming service to IMB Cloud Video. With that change, they have totally changed the look and feel of their website. To me, a frequent Ustream watcher, it seems like IBM Cloud Video is being targeted more at businesses and less towards individuals. They recently removed the follower option where you could follow your favorite channels and easily find them in your followers list. I loved this original feature because I didn't have to remember the names of all my favorite Ustream artists channels. I was also able to easily see at a glance if any of those channels were currently streaming. With that feature disabled, I know longer know who is streaming. The only way to know is to manually search for each channel to see if they are live or not. As a community (Ustream artists and friends) we are all feeling the pinch. We're not being forced out at this point, but things are definitely more difficult. Our ultimate solution is check twitter to find out when people are streaming. Most of us follow each other on twitter, so as long as people tweet when they are live on Ustream it's okay I guess.
Anyway, this has prompted me to update my Ustream artist list. I am making it more extensive and including Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Blog links. That way everyone can stay connected. This also helps people who are new to the community. I don't want this great group of people to die because of IBM's decisions. I'm not sure how I'm going to publish it though. My last list is published on here in an older post. However, this chart includes so much information. Not sure how to best organize it. Right now I have my information in a google document file. We'll see.
