Yahoo is reporting today that it will be shutting down its Yahoo! Live! service which is essentially a competitor to UStream and Justin.tv. Yahoo Live has been up for less than a year, and already Yahoo is pulling the plug on this divisional start-up. The phone is probably the costs to keep customers are too high because of the volume of traffic the site was experienced, it simply was not profitable. This action has significant implications and could be an indication that the niche live video broadcast market isn’t as profitable and we could in fact see companies such as Ustream scale back in uniques or also cease due to lack of potential return and high operating costs. Additionally, existing small competitors such as Ustream could face significant competition when YouTube soon will too launch comparable services where people can broadcast themselves live. However, there aren’t currently really any well established live streaming players in the mobile space, except perhaps Qik. This segment I think has significant potential simply because there aren’t really any established players and because of the widescale use of smartphones because of affordible data planes and also because of faster HSDPA networks. However, this market too could be challenging immediately if YouTube decides to enter, which isn’t likely for reasonably within about 2 more years (if at all), so there is plenty of space for emerging start-ups.