9 ms·

I've worked for a major streaming company and with several other major streaming companies (including Twitch); I'd like to think I have a pretty good understand

I've worked for a major streaming company and with several other major streaming companies (including Twitch); I'd like to think I have a pretty good understanding of streaming costs. > Youtube (very profitable) The "very" part is probably not true, and that's with Google's massive advertising empire behind it. There's a good reason why Google is going so hard at anti-adblocker initiatives. You can't run a profitable video streaming service with "just throw the video on a CDN" as the strategy, you have to be the CDN because at the scale you're operating at, you'll be murdered by external CDN costs. But you're also correct that Twitch's content makes it incredibly hard to serve cheaply. Same reason why Mixer (competitor by Microsoft) folded so quickly and Facebook Gaming and Youtube Streaming have been neglected projects since launch. There's only two viable video streaming business models right now: your content is essentially free (TikTok/Snap/Instagram), or your bandwidth is essentially free (HBO before the divorce with AT&T, maybe Comcast-Peacock+). Netflix sorta had near free content for a while before the studios cut them off. I think Amazon was betting that AWS efficiencies could push Twitch into profitability, guess not.

PurpleRamen 3y ago
> I think Amazon was betting that AWS efficiencies could push Twitch into profitability, guess not. Twitch seems to pay normal rates for AWS. And they are around the profit-zone for several years now it seems, just not making big money. So they are in fact very profitable, just not for Twitch, but for AWS and Amazon.
fer 3y ago
> I think Amazon was betting that AWS efficiencies could push Twitch into profitability, guess not. I don't think any significant chunk of the Twitch infra runs on AWS.
- Supermancho 3y ago
  I found this: https://scaleyourapp.com/live-video-streaming-infrastructure-at-twitch/ https://scaleyourapp.com/live-video-streaming-infrastructure...
  - rescbr 3y ago
    IVS doesn’t (or at least when I worked there, didn’t) use AWS network. Streaming traffic goes (or went) through Twitch’s network - it’s cheaper traffic compared to CloudFront’s.
SergeAx 3y ago
What about the OnlyFans model?
- heroprotagonist 3y ago
  What, the 'get a bot to spam people every day, pretending to be you, to ask a ridiculous amount of money for short low-effort pieces of content from a random bucket until they figure it out and unsubscribe. Hope you can pull enough new suckers into this message loop to make it work out, while spending the majority of your time producing tons of new unique free content for other sites to drive people to your onlyfans" model?
kevinventullo 3y ago
Why does “content is essentially free” apply to TikTok and not Twitch?
- ibbih 3y ago
  Twitch pays streamers?
  - Thuggery 3y ago
    Twitch "pays" streamers with a cut of the money they made off them though. The paycheck is 1/2 a cut of money given to the streamer by a third party with no work from Twitch, and 1/2 a cut from ad revenues that were generated by the eyeballs accrued by the streamers.
- seabrookmx 3y ago
  Because the top twitch streamers earn a decent living, whereas TikTok creators are paid (basically) nothing.
- swores 3y ago
  Twitch streamers get ad revenue sharing, afaik TikTok users don't?
- e1g 3y ago
  Twitch pays out to creators 50-70% (some earn millions per year) TikTok pays essentially $0
- everforward 3y ago
  I don't really follow the space, so if I use the wrong amounts or titles, someone please correct me. For streamers with even a moderate following, they'll be in some status with Twitch to earn money off Twitch's ads. Don't recall if it's Affiliate or Partner or what, but the follower counts were surprisingly small to qualify for ad revenue. Twitch pays out $3.50 per 1k ad views to those creators, so Twitch is paying for their content. Tiktok has something that pays out to creators, but it's $0.20-$0.40 per 1k views and you need 10k subscribers to qualify (this seems much harder than Twitch's, which is in the hundreds iirc). It also looks like it was a one-time thing, where they set $300 million aside for that but I haven't seen any plans to continually fund it.
benwilber0 3y ago
Several years ago I cobbled together all the pieces to make a live video streaming website [1] like Twitch.tv, et al. It's impossible to actually run at any kind of scale without being an ISP or Google-scale peer. Not to mention the enormous amount of DMCAs when people are trying to stream live sports, Pay-per-view, etc. It was fun to play with it for a couple months. But there's no business here. Twitch.tv is also finding that out. [1] https://github.com/benwilber/boltstream https://github.com/benwilber/boltstream
- jacquesm 3y ago
  We did this peer-to-peer but the risks for users became too great for that to be sustainable.
  - some_random 3y ago
    What sorts of risks to users were you seeing?
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Stalkers figuring out where the women live and then doing housecalls, blackmail, etc. Too many assholes on this planet for a service like that to work in a way that potentially allows for people to be identified.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        And it is only getting easier. https://www.npr.org/2023/12/19/1219984002/artificial-intelligence-can-find-your-location-in-photos-worrying-privacy-expert https://www.npr.org/2023/12/19/1219984002/artificial-intelli... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38813150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38813150
- golergka 3y ago
  What about all the pirate websites? There's hundreds of them all around the world, some supported with ads, others with subscriptions. How do they manage the bandwidth problems?
thrdbndndn 3y ago
I don't think these two categories are differentiated by if their content is free (despite they do have a deference in this regard), it's more about how the customers pay for it. Hack, I'd say livestreaming (Twitch, the livestream part of YouTube/TikTok etc.) is a very different business altogether compared to normal "video streaming" (serving VODs). Also when talking about livestreaming business, one can't ignore China. They have some massive platforms (in both cashflow and audience size) despite being unknown outside China. Like Bilibili, Douyu, Huya, etc.
PeterStuer 3y ago
Twitch's differentiator is its backchannel, the viewer's 'chat'. Unfortunately for Twitch this only works if the whole loop is low latency. This makes it very hatd to optimize for cost. On top of this, it also makes adds even more intrusive and disruptive for the viewer. One thing that surprised me is how they never managed to grow the VOD side. They basically handed that side, arguably a less costly and easier to monetize segment to Youtube. For content producers, twitch often seems like a not the primary revenue stream. They put out lucrative sponsored content, or have twitch as an advertizing channel for their Youtube VOD/clips or their onlyfans. All revenue Twitch misses out on, while bearing the streaming cost.

PurpleRamen 3y ago

> I think Amazon was betting that AWS efficiencies could push Twitch into profitability, guess not. Twitch seems to pay normal rates for AWS. And they are around the profit-zone for several years now it seems, just not making big money. So they are in fact very profitable, just not for Twitch, but for AWS and Amazon.

fer 3y ago

> I think Amazon was betting that AWS efficiencies could push Twitch into profitability, guess not. I don't think any significant chunk of the Twitch infra runs on AWS.

Supermancho 3y ago
I found this: https://scaleyourapp.com/live-video-streaming-infrastructure-at-twitch/ https://scaleyourapp.com/live-video-streaming-infrastructure...
- rescbr 3y ago
  IVS doesn’t (or at least when I worked there, didn’t) use AWS network. Streaming traffic goes (or went) through Twitch’s network - it’s cheaper traffic compared to CloudFront’s.

SergeAx 3y ago

What about the OnlyFans model?

heroprotagonist 3y ago
What, the 'get a bot to spam people every day, pretending to be you, to ask a ridiculous amount of money for short low-effort pieces of content from a random bucket until they figure it out and unsubscribe. Hope you can pull enough new suckers into this message loop to make it work out, while spending the majority of your time producing tons of new unique free content for other sites to drive people to your onlyfans" model?

kevinventullo 3y ago

Why does “content is essentially free” apply to TikTok and not Twitch?

ibbih 3y ago
Twitch pays streamers?
- Thuggery 3y ago
  Twitch "pays" streamers with a cut of the money they made off them though. The paycheck is 1/2 a cut of money given to the streamer by a third party with no work from Twitch, and 1/2 a cut from ad revenues that were generated by the eyeballs accrued by the streamers.
seabrookmx 3y ago
Because the top twitch streamers earn a decent living, whereas TikTok creators are paid (basically) nothing.
swores 3y ago
Twitch streamers get ad revenue sharing, afaik TikTok users don't?
e1g 3y ago
Twitch pays out to creators 50-70% (some earn millions per year) TikTok pays essentially $0
everforward 3y ago
I don't really follow the space, so if I use the wrong amounts or titles, someone please correct me. For streamers with even a moderate following, they'll be in some status with Twitch to earn money off Twitch's ads. Don't recall if it's Affiliate or Partner or what, but the follower counts were surprisingly small to qualify for ad revenue. Twitch pays out $3.50 per 1k ad views to those creators, so Twitch is paying for their content. Tiktok has something that pays out to creators, but it's $0.20-$0.40 per 1k views and you need 10k subscribers to qualify (this seems much harder than Twitch's, which is in the hundreds iirc). It also looks like it was a one-time thing, where they set $300 million aside for that but I haven't seen any plans to continually fund it.

benwilber0 3y ago

Several years ago I cobbled together all the pieces to make a live video streaming website [1] like Twitch.tv, et al. It's impossible to actually run at any kind of scale without being an ISP or Google-scale peer. Not to mention the enormous amount of DMCAs when people are trying to stream live sports, Pay-per-view, etc. It was fun to play with it for a couple months. But there's no business here. Twitch.tv is also finding that out. [1] https://github.com/benwilber/boltstream https://github.com/benwilber/boltstream

jacquesm 3y ago
We did this peer-to-peer but the risks for users became too great for that to be sustainable.
- some_random 3y ago
  What sorts of risks to users were you seeing?
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Stalkers figuring out where the women live and then doing housecalls, blackmail, etc. Too many assholes on this planet for a service like that to work in a way that potentially allows for people to be identified.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      And it is only getting easier. https://www.npr.org/2023/12/19/1219984002/artificial-intelligence-can-find-your-location-in-photos-worrying-privacy-expert https://www.npr.org/2023/12/19/1219984002/artificial-intelli... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38813150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38813150
golergka 3y ago
What about all the pirate websites? There's hundreds of them all around the world, some supported with ads, others with subscriptions. How do they manage the bandwidth problems?

thrdbndndn 3y ago

I don't think these two categories are differentiated by if their content is free (despite they do have a deference in this regard), it's more about how the customers pay for it. Hack, I'd say livestreaming (Twitch, the livestream part of YouTube/TikTok etc.) is a very different business altogether compared to normal "video streaming" (serving VODs). Also when talking about livestreaming business, one can't ignore China. They have some massive platforms (in both cashflow and audience size) despite being unknown outside China. Like Bilibili, Douyu, Huya, etc.

PeterStuer 3y ago

Twitch's differentiator is its backchannel, the viewer's 'chat'. Unfortunately for Twitch this only works if the whole loop is low latency. This makes it very hatd to optimize for cost. On top of this, it also makes adds even more intrusive and disruptive for the viewer. One thing that surprised me is how they never managed to grow the VOD side. They basically handed that side, arguably a less costly and easier to monetize segment to Youtube. For content producers, twitch often seems like a not the primary revenue stream. They put out lucrative sponsored content, or have twitch as an advertizing channel for their Youtube VOD/clips or their onlyfans. All revenue Twitch misses out on, while bearing the streaming cost.