The creation of YouTube in February 2005 has had an undoubted social impact, making it possible for anyone and everyone to film and share videos universally. Of the millions of videos the site hosts, many have become cult hits with countless views; some are outlets of artistic or political expression, whereas others simply document family birthdays or outings with friends. Whatever the content of each individual piece, together the online video community has huge potential cultural influence.

With the sheer volume of footage and its availability to those in every corner of the globe, it seems hard to imagine the popularity of YouTube waning. However, it has not been possible to broadcast live on the site, which would seemingly open further doors and take video sharing to a new level.

This is the fundamental idea behind bambuser.com, which essentially enables an individual's mobile phone to broadcast audio and video live to the website, by the downloading of an application to their iPhone or mobile device. Hence, it becomes possible to communicate whatever to whoever whenever, so long as you have your mobile phone with you.

The beauty of this idea lies in its simplicity, yet this is anything but its weakness. The giving of the ability to broadcast from any location to every member of society is a gift that has the potential to be groundbreaking in terms of redefining and shaping the world we live in. In the words of co-founder Måns Adler, bambuser sets out to "democratize a medium that for a long time only have been available for a lucky few".  

We are however, a long way from this reality. bambuser.com was only founded in 2007, and despite a growing number of users, a large proportion of these are from its Swedish homeland, and few videos are yet to use the full potential of the technology.

However, it is possible to gain an early insight into potential uses of the application, which is currently compatible with over 120 mobile models. Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, a torrent file tracker website, described by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the biggest facilitators of illegal downloading", used the application to hold press conferences during a recent copyright infringement trial. The application enables communication to the broadcaster through its real-time chat feature, hence people were able to ask Mr. Sunde questions and receive answers at the click of a button. The broadcast went out globally and was captured by international news agencies.

Adler points out another benefit over the traditional video sites YouTube and Google Video, is that whilst watching, for example, a filmed lecture on these sites, the lecturer is unable to answer queries, during a live broadcast the viewer has the opportunity to ask and the question has the opportunity to be answered. Mobile devices with internet access can view live broadcasts directly on their handset, furthering the scope of the technology.

As well as foreseeing the technology being used to broadcast 'a son's soccer game to a father working late', Adler, named Sweden's Internet Entrepreneur of 2008 by one magazine, says there is currently a large uptake with the Swedish rescue services. Using bambuser to stream live from the scene of the accident, operators have been able to make 'more informed decisions' about the action they will take vis-à-vis hearing descriptions of the scene through a traditional phone call.

The ability to revolutionise video sharing as we know it is not the only potential benefit of bambuser; it could be that its use to the emergency services, and also in commercial businesses, may be the use that best utilises the system. It is surely now only a matter of time before this technology begins to have an impression.