HuffPost Live was voted the most innovative media product to emerge in 2012 by Mashable readers, beating out other contenders such as Dark Sky, Flipboard, Timehop and RebelMouse. HuffPost Live is a Web-only video news service that launched in mid-August. It provides twelve hours of live video every weekday. Could it be a new direction for the delivery and consumption of news?

“Most of the programming is done in a daytime talk show format,” explains Mashable. “Guests — a mix of Huffington Post writers, third-party experts and viewers — are brought into HuffPost Live’s studios in New York and Los Angeles, but more often are welcomed via Google Hangout or Skype.”

It can be interactive too, as viewer comments posted on the site are often cited and discussed by the hosts. Registered users can even apply to become an on-air guest. There is no set programming schedule and the segments are not assigned to specific shows, but rather distributed organically to 60+ sections.

“In its first month, HuffPost Live welcomed 2,000 guests and generated 1,200 clips — ranging from minute-long highlights to 25-minute segments — that were redistributed on huffingtonpost.com and AOL’s other Web properties, a portfolio that includes TechCrunch, Engadget and DailyFinance,” reports Mashable.

“People don’t want to be talked at anymore, they want to be talked with — part of the conversation,” explains Roy Sekoff, HuffPost president and founding editor of The Huffington Post. “That’s the big difference between cable news and us.”

While some have suggested that HuffPost Live is attempting to kill cable news, Sekoff says his team wants to create a new medium, one he describes as “CNN meets YouTube.”