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the problem to build a competitor is the community, not the technical part. If one (or a handful of) streamer move elsewhere, most of the viewers won't follow h

the problem to build a competitor is the community, not the technical part. If one (or a handful of) streamer move elsewhere, most of the viewers won't follow him

mattmaroon 2y ago
Of course. But we've seen it happen before. Digg had a huge lead on Reddit, angered the community enough that they left. Myspace v Facebook. Etc. I don't use Twitch deeply so I'm not sure if this is a big enough thing to make people switch in large numbers, but if it is, the tech stack just doesn't seem like a moat at all these days. If anything, I'd say the fact that they prune old content already sort of is the opposite. YouTube's deep content library makes it hard to compete with them. Twitch purposefully doesn't even have one. A skilled programmer could probably bang out a viable competitor in a week, and raise funds just as fast if the AWS bill became significant.
- jmholla 2y ago
  Yea, but, in addition, Twitch has a very expensive business to run. Video is orders of magnitude more data than pictures and audio which are itself magnitudes above text. The costs in your example are wildly different. And the culture. Your examples are from the 2000s. The culture of the Internet back then was vastly different than it is today. > A skilled programmer could probably bang out a viable competitor in a week, and raise funds just as fast if the AWS bill became significant. I disagree. Where is this magic funds button? You're gonna need quite the pitch to get an investor to invest LOTS of money going up against Amazon (edit: and Google!).
  - mattmaroon 2y ago
    It's been awhile since I was in that world, but I have to imagine that if you have a site whose traffic is growing at a good rate, you don't need to pitch that many investors. Some seed funding could get you enough runway to pay the AWS bills. You very rarely hear of the startup who ran out of money because they had too much traffic.
- okdood64 2y ago
  > A skilled programmer Running a massive video site is not as simple as throwing a bunch of skilled programmers at it...
  - mattmaroon 2y ago
    Surely. But starting a streaming video site that gains traction and scales is easier now than when Twitch did it, I am sure.
AraceliHarker 2y ago
That's exactly why Mixer failed to gain popularity, even after poaching streamers like Ninja from Twitch.

the problem to build a competitor is the community, not the technical part. If one (or a handful of) streamer move elsewhere, most of the viewers won't follow him

mattmaroon 2y ago

Of course. But we've seen it happen before. Digg had a huge lead on Reddit, angered the community enough that they left. Myspace v Facebook. Etc. I don't use Twitch deeply so I'm not sure if this is a big enough thing to make people switch in large numbers, but if it is, the tech stack just doesn't seem like a moat at all these days. If anything, I'd say the fact that they prune old content already sort of is the opposite. YouTube's deep content library makes it hard to compete with them. Twitch purposefully doesn't even have one. A skilled programmer could probably bang out a viable competitor in a week, and raise funds just as fast if the AWS bill became significant.

jmholla 2y ago
Yea, but, in addition, Twitch has a very expensive business to run. Video is orders of magnitude more data than pictures and audio which are itself magnitudes above text. The costs in your example are wildly different. And the culture. Your examples are from the 2000s. The culture of the Internet back then was vastly different than it is today. > A skilled programmer could probably bang out a viable competitor in a week, and raise funds just as fast if the AWS bill became significant. I disagree. Where is this magic funds button? You're gonna need quite the pitch to get an investor to invest LOTS of money going up against Amazon (edit: and Google!).
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  It's been awhile since I was in that world, but I have to imagine that if you have a site whose traffic is growing at a good rate, you don't need to pitch that many investors. Some seed funding could get you enough runway to pay the AWS bills. You very rarely hear of the startup who ran out of money because they had too much traffic.
okdood64 2y ago
> A skilled programmer Running a massive video site is not as simple as throwing a bunch of skilled programmers at it...
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  Surely. But starting a streaming video site that gains traction and scales is easier now than when Twitch did it, I am sure.

AraceliHarker 2y ago

That's exactly why Mixer failed to gain popularity, even after poaching streamers like Ninja from Twitch.