I must have been asleep because there aren’t only half a dozen ways to stream yourself to the Web, there are 35!

Today Youtube confirmed that it, too, would be diving into the genre. Conventional wisdom is that one of YouTube’s many competitors (MySpace TV, Veoh, Daily Motion, Metacafe) will want to get into the space so they’ll pony up the cash to buy one of the “really original 35″ ways to stream yourself to the Web.

Trust me: the last thing any one of YouTube’s competitors want is more unsellable, low quality video.

While the leaders of both Justin.tv and Ustream.tv put a positive spin on this, the fact is that the exhibitionists that turn to “selfstreaming” live will favor YouTube because YouTube commands 60% market share in online video and by extension has the audiences that such users look for.

The fact that some of these “35 original and unique” companies focus singularly on live streaming means nothing to users, it means something to PR teams and IR spinsters… but users won’t care if there is 8 people watching them.

I wish them well, but we’re seeing the same dynamics in live streaming as we saw / are seeing in video file sharing social networks: way too similar companies vying for aggregation and distribution supremacy with too little quality content.