CoverItLive is a tool I’ve been using extensively since I learned about it, and is hands down one of the best tools for liveblogging, particularly for professionals.
The stability of CoverItLive is virtually spotless – I've covered a number of live events from Digg, and even their thundering hoards haven't been able to bring down the system. They offer the ability to embed inline video from a wide variety of sources (Qik, UStream, YouTube, etc), as well as all manner of hyperlinks, formatted text and images.
They also provide sophisticated methods for communicating with the live audience, as well as a certain amount of metrics on who's watching and participating, something you can't find in other solutions. For those looking for the Google after the event is over, you can export your coverage to text format, and replace the embedded widget with the source for the liveblog.
Solutions like CoverItLive offer a more professional solution that appeal to those looking to make a living from liveblogging (or more accurately, supplement their blog coverage with a monetizable form of live coverage). It's tailored to those with a built in audience, already, and you're not likely to grow your readership in a significant way like you could with Twitter and FriendFeed.
What are they using the money for?
According to TechCrunch, further development of enterprise liveblogging is the goal:
CoverItLive has also quietly rolled out a money-making product dubbed CiL Enterprise that brings additional features to professional users, catering to publishers who cover live events with multiple writers in particular. The enterprise version is currently still free, but the company aims to start charging somewhere between $50/month to $500/month for CiL Enterprise within a couple of months, leaving an option for free usage in educational environments.
Congrats to CiL.
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