At 10 AM ET on Monday morning, the Huffington Post is launching HuffPost Live, a streaming video network with a heavy emphasis on user participation via webcam, smartphone or tablet. “From the beginning, one of our goals has been to try and create the most social video experience possible,” said Huffington Post founding editor and HuffPost Live president Roy Sekoff.
The network launches with ten hosts, “eight hours of live programming out of New York and four hours out of Los Angeles each weekday.” Highlights will be shown overnight and on weekends. Huffington Post reporters, bloggers and editors “will be an integral part of the programming, making regular appearances that will give viewers a real-time sense of what is happening on verticals all across HuffPost.”
Users can weigh in from smartphones, tablets and webcams. Each story is accompanied by a large red record button and “Join This Segment.” Users are asked to explain what makes them “a good guest on this topic” in 140 characters or less, provide contact info and then record their take. Coming this morning are segments about Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan for Vice President, Arianna Huffington talking about work/life balance, and how gun control measures in Australia could be a model for the United States.
Each video segment is accompanied by a set of “Resources,” links back to “key articles” (both from the Huffington Post and elsewhere), tweets, polls, maps, photos and charts.
The hosts are Marc Lamont Hill, Abby Huntsman, Alicia Menendez, Alyona Minkovski, Nancy Redd, Mike Sacks, Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, Jacob Soboroff, Janet Varney and Josh Zepps. The hosts come from a variety of backgrounds: Ahmed Shihab-Eldin worked for Al Jazeera, for example; Abby Huntsman is the daughter of former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, and Nancy Redd is an author and speaker on women’s body image and former Miss America finalist.
