Yahoo tried to launch a cool video service last night:

Yahoo is launching the service with an API, allowing people to mash up their own streaming video services. That's very cool, and unusually forthcoming. Most services don't go public with APIs, if ever, until the site has been live for a little while.

However, they failed to add enough capacity for such a service, and got the all too predictable results:

Unfortunately, Yahoo Live launched with a serious capacity deficit. I had the service go from functional to "our servers are smoking" several times when the user count broke about 800. Hey, Yahoo: This is why the private beta was invented. If you don't want to put Yahoo-sized capacity into a new product, don't pretend that it's ready for a public viewing.

When you do a launch, it's really not a good thing to have it fall over within hours. I have to agree with Rafe Needleman's take on it: take the beta invite route so you can figure out what you need somewhat smoothly.

Technorati Tags: video, video streaming