> Fourth, streaming platforms are incredibly expensive to create, maintain, and promote. They will not be profitable for a long, long time, on top of requiring mountains of cash to start.
I agree with that and unless you have founders who possess the required expertise + motivation, it will be expensive.
> And finally, users "get used" to a specific platform, e.g. Twitch chat, and it's difficult to break these emotional attachments.
Yes and no, I think if you build a quality product, people will try it, and if it works and is delightful, they'll come back. Look at TikTok.
> Yes and no, I think if you build a quality product, people will try it, and if it works and is delightful, they'll come back. Look at TikTok.
TikTok is different because you can work on maintaining an audience on something like Instagram and also at the same time try to build an audience on TikTok, even if their social networks are different.
If you are in a contract with Twitch, you cannot stream anywhere else. You are either staying on Twitch and your uses are staying where they are used to the community, or you go to another platform with a different community, different chat and chat emotes, different subscription system, etc.
What I often see cited from people not wanting to leave Twitch is the Twitch emotes and the way chat works on Twitch.
For example, Facebook isn't anonymous so chat tends to be more serious and less meme-y.
Youtube has a far superior player with live rewind, takes less computer resources, and has access to far more viewers than Twitch; but it has an inferior chat with no Twitch emotes. So Twitch viewers are reluctant to make the switch full-time.
That said, YouTube has the best chance to take out Twitch. Google just needs to make a better chat and improve discoverability. Twitch streamers that switch to YouTube, either by choice or by force, can still make a living there.
To add: I know of one streamer that streams on Facebook for their income and streams on Twitch to maintain their old community there and to hopefully take more viewers to Facebook. But they are not gaining income from Twitch because they are not under contract. And that is a grind. It's not something for the average person.
Interesting, so are you saying that to be profitable on Twitch you have to be under contract? I'm not familiar with how that works really, thanks for the commentary. I assumed that most creators/streamers are simply regular users who are streaming on the platform w/o legal contracts etc.
What advice would you give to someone building a new streaming platform? focus on building the conversation piece first?
There are Twitch affiliates and Twitch partners. Twitch partners are under contract, although you can still make decent money as an affiliate. Partnered streamers are the ones that have more restrictions as to where they can stream. Most of the streamers making the biggest amount of money are going to be partnered and attached to Twitch.
I don't have a lot of advice on a new streaming platform. As a user, I like usernames, emotes, the ability to gift subscriptions, and no mid-roll ads. Any streaming platform that wants to take off also needs to have a built-in way to create a shareable "clip" from a live stream.
I agree with that and unless you have founders who possess the required expertise + motivation, it will be expensive.
> And finally, users "get used" to a specific platform, e.g. Twitch chat, and it's difficult to break these emotional attachments.
Yes and no, I think if you build a quality product, people will try it, and if it works and is delightful, they'll come back. Look at TikTok.