Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff dot com either everyone, and welcome to text stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren. Before we get into this,
Speaker 1: I just want to alert listeners ahead of time. I've
Speaker 1: got a cold, so I'm going to sound a little weird.
Speaker 1: He's kind of raspy. Is it's a little bit tom? Wait? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know the piano has been drinking and Jonathan has
Speaker 1: been on an airplane. So that's where we're at. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is brought to us courtesy of a little listener mail.
Speaker 1: This one is from Daniel via actual email. Yeah, apparently
Speaker 1: people still use that. By the way, guys, we've seen
Speaker 1: a big upswing and listener and email and Facebook and Twitter.
Speaker 1: We love it. Keep up the great so so much.
Speaker 1: We're sending we We love every single note that we receive.
Speaker 1: Even if we are too incredibly stressed out to respond
Speaker 1: to all of you. We love you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I'm trying desperately to get through all the backlogs, so
Speaker 1: if you have written, I am working my way back
Speaker 1: to you, babe. Anyway, Daniel, he wrote to us to say,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you did this before, but we've
Speaker 1: recently had the news then online gaming streaming service called
Speaker 1: Twitch is surpassing live streaming services like you Stream, w
Speaker 1: w E Network live Stream, and other streaming services by volume. However,
Speaker 1: I don't really hear about it outside of gamer groups,
Speaker 1: which is odd to me. Can you all get into
Speaker 1: the details about how Twitch works, or maybe into live
Speaker 1: streaming in general. It's a growing trend in recent years.
Speaker 1: I can only see getting bigger as gaming audiences grow.
Speaker 1: You know what, Daniel, We agree it's a great topic.
Speaker 1: It's one that's become incredibly important as of the week.
Speaker 1: We're recording this podcast because they're Okay. So there's this
Speaker 1: rumor going around, and at this point it's a very
Speaker 1: strong rumor, although the parties that are involved are still
Speaker 1: not commenting officially on it, that Google in the form
Speaker 1: of YouTube is interested in purchasing Twitch for a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: So this was a story broken by Variety originally, and
Speaker 1: then it was corroborated by the Wall Street Journal, although
Speaker 1: again no one from either Twitch nor Google is is
Speaker 1: commenting on the subject. By the time this podcast comes out,
Speaker 1: it may very well be that all of this is
Speaker 1: supremely old news and that the the deal has either
Speaker 1: been agreed upon or declined, but we don't as we're
Speaker 1: recording this, don't know the outcome al right where we
Speaker 1: are recording this on May twenty and um, and yeah,
Speaker 1: these these two sources. By the way, Variety in the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal reported different stories, um that the sale
Speaker 1: is already certain, or that the talks are in early stages,
Speaker 1: and that Twitch might just sell stake in their company
Speaker 1: instead of selling the entire company as a whole. Right,
Speaker 1: And even though official sources are not doing any talking
Speaker 1: about it right now, anonymous sources have done a lot
Speaker 1: of talking. For for example, Verage reported that other companies,
Speaker 1: including Microsoft we're also according Twitch, but have been turned down. Um.
Speaker 1: At any rate, It's it's a really interesting news item
Speaker 1: for for both the gaming industry and the live streaming industry.
Speaker 1: And I guess video on the internet as a whole, yeah,
Speaker 1: And keeping in mind that video on the internet is
Speaker 1: still a very young thing. I mean, it wasn't that
Speaker 1: long ago that you didn't have any sort of video
Speaker 1: hosting services. And the way you would get video on
Speaker 1: the internet is that someone would save a video file
Speaker 1: and you'd have to download the whole thing to watch it.
Speaker 1: So this is a this is kind of showing the
Speaker 1: next step in in the the world of video online.
Speaker 1: So we've got the prerecorded stuff, which YouTube has got
Speaker 1: pretty sewn up at least for user generated. Then you've
Speaker 1: got the pre record stuff that is made by studios
Speaker 1: and television networks. Now that's all over the place like Netflix, Hulu,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. And then you have broadcast
Speaker 1: where you're doing a live streaming event, which is what
Speaker 1: Twitch and other services like Twitch are all about. So
Speaker 1: how does that work? Why is it such a big
Speaker 1: deal of why why would Google even be interested in it?
Speaker 1: A lettle in one billion dollars worth of interest in Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we thought we would first go into a little
Speaker 1: bit of history. We like to always look back into
Speaker 1: how things became what they are. So let's, uh, let's
Speaker 1: just think we're not going to get into the way
Speaker 1: back machine because this is pretty recent history. Lauren and
Speaker 1: I both lived through this history. It wasn't going on
Speaker 1: immediately around us, but we were technically alive while it
Speaker 1: was happening, yes, which is relatively rare for the two
Speaker 1: of us. For lots of the history that we do
Speaker 1: on this show. Yeah, there was a period in when
Speaker 1: I was dead to the world. So anyway, Twitch is
Speaker 1: kind of a first of all, it's a spinoff of
Speaker 1: another company. It's so in order to understand where Twitch
Speaker 1: came from, you have to go back a little further
Speaker 1: and look at the origin of this other company, Justin
Speaker 1: TV exactly who, which was founded by Justin Cohn, Emmett Sheer,
Speaker 1: Michael Cybel, and Kyle Vauched. And so here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Even that company was the product of some other some
Speaker 1: other work done by this group of people that didn't
Speaker 1: work out so much. You see, you had this group
Speaker 1: who created a web calendar software called Keiko. This was
Speaker 1: from a group who had gone to Yale together I think,
Speaker 1: and formed the company soon after graduation. And so they
Speaker 1: were approached by a brand new seed company called y Combinator.
Speaker 1: And a seed company is all about finding startups to
Speaker 1: to finance, to fund, hoping that those startups will blossom
Speaker 1: and therefore those investments will end up making huge returns
Speaker 1: in return. You also see these companies that otherwise might
Speaker 1: not have a chance grow into something really interesting. Right.
Speaker 1: Part of that same batch was both Reddit and Infogami,
Speaker 1: which is one of those companies that was started by
Speaker 1: Aaron Schwartz. Yeah, so amazing group of people, right, So
Speaker 1: not just the smarty pants folks behind Kiko, but these
Speaker 1: other groups as well. I mean, Reddit is now one
Speaker 1: of the more popular sites on the Internet has a
Speaker 1: flourishing community, although it's a community that has its own
Speaker 1: uh issues and in fighting. Well yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: more popular Reddit gets, the more irritated the hardcore audience.
Speaker 1: But the same thing happened to dig so it'll be
Speaker 1: interesting to see what happens with Reddit. But that's a
Speaker 1: totally different podcast. So here's the thing about kiko um.
Speaker 1: It was, according to Justin con himself, not that great
Speaker 1: of a product, and the reason he gave behind that
Speaker 1: was that he and his fellow programmers didn't really need
Speaker 1: a calendar. He said, I was going to college, I
Speaker 1: had two classes, I had classes on on two days
Speaker 1: of the week, and otherwise I was sitting around programming.
Speaker 1: So what the heck do I need a schedule for?
Speaker 1: It does not useful to me. So since I didn't
Speaker 1: need it, I wasn't using it, and since I don't
Speaker 1: use it, the products we were making weren't very compelling.
Speaker 1: And then Google calendar comes out and everyone's like, well,
Speaker 1: so they decided what we're gonna do is we're gonna
Speaker 1: sell this company for as much as we can so
Speaker 1: that we can pay back our investors and then constrate
Speaker 1: something else. So of course, they sold their company the
Speaker 1: way any sane person would. They listed it on eBay,
Speaker 1: and it's sold on eBay for some two and fifty
Speaker 1: eight thousand dollars to a Canadian company called two Cows
Speaker 1: to Cows. Two Cows. Yeah, yeah, they have two cows,
Speaker 1: twice as many cows as someone who has one cow.
Speaker 1: So yeah, except its spelled t u c ows, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's It was funny because they were going for
Speaker 1: just fifty dollars. They wanted fifty grand. They were hoping
Speaker 1: they could get fifty grand so they could pay off
Speaker 1: their investors, and then they saw that it had hit
Speaker 1: eighty grand and they thought, oh, we got some walk
Speaker 1: in money now, and it finally sold for two eight
Speaker 1: thousand dollars on eBay. All right, yeah, yeah, two two
Speaker 1: cows and a calendar app that. Yeah, that's great. I
Speaker 1: had no idea you could actually list a company on eBay,
Speaker 1: and the idea that that's involved in the terms of
Speaker 1: service blows my mind. Anyway, they successfully sell Keiko, and
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, Justin and Emmett pitched this idea
Speaker 1: of justin dot TV to Paul Graham. Paul Graham was
Speaker 1: the guy who founded the y Combinator Seed company, and
Speaker 1: the premise originally was not for some sort of live
Speaker 1: broadcast uh service for the general public, all right, It
Speaker 1: was sort of a curiosity. The idea was to just
Speaker 1: put a webcam um basically on on Kan's head and
Speaker 1: have it broadcast twenty four hours a day, seven days
Speaker 1: a week. So I think that he was doing so
Speaker 1: it was justin TV, justin TV, right, it was. It
Speaker 1: was like it was a kind of life casting, except
Speaker 1: instead of having the camera turned back on himself, it
Speaker 1: was more or less from his perspective and view. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some great stories about weird things that happening. Within
Speaker 1: the first week of going live, apparently his audience felt
Speaker 1: that it was not the most compelling of of entertainment,
Speaker 1: that watching a guy sit in an apartment and code
Speaker 1: was not necessarily the most interesting subject matter, that it
Speaker 1: needed a little bit of spice, so um, so they
Speaker 1: provided it to the audience. Provided the spice this is
Speaker 1: where you know, it's kind of like when you hear
Speaker 1: about a news outlet making the news. In this case,
Speaker 1: it was the audience making the contact content. How do
Speaker 1: they make the content? They contact the police and say
Speaker 1: that there was a report of a stabbing incident in
Speaker 1: Justin Kahn's apartment. So the police pay a little visit.
Speaker 1: By the way, this entire incident is preserved on YouTube
Speaker 1: if you want to watch it. And so you hear
Speaker 1: the cops knocking at the door, they come inside. They
Speaker 1: explained that they got a report about stabbing. Pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: Justin figures out, Hey, the it's our users who have
Speaker 1: decided that this is this would be entertaining to watch.
Speaker 1: What a bunch of scamps um. There were other incidents
Speaker 1: that were similar, where they would call in fake fires
Speaker 1: and there were like six or seven fire trucks lined
Speaker 1: outside of Justin's apartment legally culpable scamps that. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: eventually they decided, hey, you know this, Uh, this idea
Speaker 1: isn't working because Justin's just not interesting enough off to
Speaker 1: keep everyone's attention. Uh. There are other incidents as well.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of videos online that explained the hijinks
Speaker 1: these guys got up to But what happened was they
Speaker 1: decided this isn't sustainable, it's not entertaining, So what can
Speaker 1: we do. How can we modify what we've built into
Speaker 1: something that actually resonates with people. So they revisit the
Speaker 1: idea and they discussed different approaches, and they came up
Speaker 1: with this idea of using the justin TV as a
Speaker 1: platform for other people to broadcast things live over the Internet.
Speaker 1: So this was the democratization of live broadcast. YouTube had
Speaker 1: created the democratization of of sharing video. But but you didn't.
Speaker 1: You couldn't do live events on YouTube at the time,
Speaker 1: So what would where would you go if you wanted
Speaker 1: to have like a live call in show, for example,
Speaker 1: and you were using maybe Skype for people to call
Speaker 1: in so that you could answer questions live on the air,
Speaker 1: You didn't really have that option. But because people couldn't
Speaker 1: hear you and then respond to you in real time,
Speaker 1: twitch or not twitch. But justin TV was a chance
Speaker 1: of doing that. So it's kind of interesting. They said
Speaker 1: that the only reason they were able to do it
Speaker 1: is because while they had been developing justin dot tv, uh,
Speaker 1: they had advanced the technology to a point that brought
Speaker 1: the cost of streaming video down significantly to just like
Speaker 1: a couple of cents or a couple of fractions of
Speaker 1: assent UH for a minute of video, which was important
Speaker 1: because you know, depending upon how much bandwidth you were using,
Speaker 1: your I s P might be charging you quite a
Speaker 1: bit for it. Oh sure, but at that rate, with
Speaker 1: a combination of advertising revenue from from ads and also
Speaker 1: money from investors, they could kind of plug along, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: The ad supported videos helped them recapture some of the costs,
Speaker 1: and they also got some pretty significant funding, like their
Speaker 1: their first round UH netted them about two million dollars.
Speaker 1: They would later get I think twenty million a couple
Speaker 1: of years down the road. So they were getting money
Speaker 1: from investors who said, this is the future of this
Speaker 1: kind of internet delivery system. Plus they were thinking ahead
Speaker 1: of how can we monetize this so that once once
Speaker 1: we get past that investment period, how do we keep
Speaker 1: making money? And that was through the ad support, So
Speaker 1: they began to think, how can we really make it
Speaker 1: easier for people to find the stuff they want? Because
Speaker 1: as more people join, it gets crowded, right, and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of people on here, but I'm only
Speaker 1: interested in one specific topic. Uh. And so they started
Speaker 1: to make categories and things like people who wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about business, or people who wanted to talk about fashion,
Speaker 1: or people wanted to talk about sports or video games,
Speaker 1: and the video games category began to get incredibly popular,
Speaker 1: something that mystified justin by the way you can watch
Speaker 1: video interviews, and he said, I just didn't get it.
Speaker 1: People were playing video games and streaming their video game
Speaker 1: experience online and other people were watching it. What's up
Speaker 1: with that? He just he was like, I didn't understand it,
Speaker 1: but I realized that other people found it valuable, So
Speaker 1: we knew that it was something we had to look at.
Speaker 1: So they start thinking, well, you know, this makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. We've we've got all these people who
Speaker 1: are um watching stuff. We should try and take advantage
Speaker 1: of that. So they ultimately on June six, two eleven,
Speaker 1: launched twitch dot tv in public beta as a completely
Speaker 1: separate brand. Now, this was the idea of let's take
Speaker 1: that video game content that everyone is streaming and create
Speaker 1: a product specifically for that, with tools built in to
Speaker 1: help people do that more smoothly, so they don't have
Speaker 1: to create their own system at home to make it work.
Speaker 1: We're going to try and integrate it in as many
Speaker 1: different approaches as possible so that more people can do this,
Speaker 1: because it's clearly a runaway success story, and it made
Speaker 1: much more sense to create a new brand than to
Speaker 1: just nestle it under justin dot tv. In fact, Twitch
Speaker 1: dot tv was getting bigger than just dot tv. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they basically immediately found an audience. They started with
Speaker 1: some three point two million unique visitors per month. Yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they've increased that a little bit. Yes, about a
Speaker 1: year later, they would hit twenty million unique visitors per month. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think they're at forty five million currently, so
Speaker 1: it is essentially doubled, like year over year, more than
Speaker 1: doubled on that first one. So that was pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: And you know, keep in mind that back in June
Speaker 1: two th eleven, it was just in beta. It wasn't
Speaker 1: even the full release yet. So they started having lots
Speaker 1: of Like there's certain games that that definitely drove participation,
Speaker 1: StarCraft too being a big one. Anything that you can
Speaker 1: get big tournaments going for exactly. So, and you know
Speaker 1: there are places like in South Korea where StarCraft tournaments are,
Speaker 1: like the super Bowl is here in the United States,
Speaker 1: so you get these enormous crowds live audiences watching these
Speaker 1: well only here in the US. It just it never
Speaker 1: really caught on that way, mostly because production costs or
Speaker 1: something like that. If you wanted to televise it, we're
Speaker 1: so high that you would have trouble getting the audience
Speaker 1: large enough to justify that expense. But the overhead for
Speaker 1: Twitch is way lower. I mean, you don't have as
Speaker 1: many employees for one thing, the infrastructure is once you've
Speaker 1: made the investment, much less expensive than television. So it
Speaker 1: was sort of the perfect platform for that and it
Speaker 1: really took off. It also allows the audience to talk
Speaker 1: to each other during the event in a way that
Speaker 1: the normal broadcast television obviously doesn't allow unless you invite
Speaker 1: a lot of your friends over right, or you have
Speaker 1: some app where you can watch the show and talk
Speaker 1: with other fans. But we've seen this over and over
Speaker 1: that television makes it. It's really hard to get something
Speaker 1: like that to work from a television platform and poured
Speaker 1: it over into an online interactive platform. Usually you see
Speaker 1: people just use either Twitter or Facebook for that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, right, And in eleven that wasn't so much
Speaker 1: the case quite yet, No, no, you know, so this
Speaker 1: in this case, you have a platform that by its
Speaker 1: very nature allows for that kind of thing. However, as
Speaker 1: of eleven it's still was not profitable and would not
Speaker 1: become I think it technically has never been profitable for
Speaker 1: a full year. They are estimating that as it will be, right,
Speaker 1: But well, well we'll see. You have to get that
Speaker 1: great balance of AD dollars and user base in order
Speaker 1: to make it profitable. And of course the bigger it gets,
Speaker 1: the more of an investment you have to make in
Speaker 1: the company's infrastructure. Right. Of course, us a few things
Speaker 1: that helped out greatly with that. Yeah. Yeah. For one thing,
Speaker 1: you've got the fact that both Sony and Microsoft gave
Speaker 1: Twitch a big thumbs up. Right, they announced partnerships that
Speaker 1: would allow a native app on both of those gaming
Speaker 1: platforms to integrate Twitch tv. Right. So, with the case
Speaker 1: of of PlayStation four, there's a button on the controller
Speaker 1: where you can start sharing what you're playing. It's a
Speaker 1: little more complex with Xbox one. Uh. And in both
Speaker 1: cases it was a feature that was not immediately implemented
Speaker 1: as soon as the consoles came out, but was implemented
Speaker 1: a little bit later on the life cycle of those consoles,
Speaker 1: I say life cycle, and these things haven't even been
Speaker 1: out a full year yet. Yeah, it's really interesting to
Speaker 1: see that they were throwing their support behind this because
Speaker 1: they could see both Sony and Microsoft could see that
Speaker 1: this this was a trend that was growing, that people
Speaker 1: were eager to share their experiences and more people were
Speaker 1: eager to to eat it all up. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I've watched play throughs online. Of course, the playthroughs I
Speaker 1: watched tend to be done for for comedic purposes, where
Speaker 1: it's a bunch of guys who are playing who know
Speaker 1: each other really well, and they're really doing it as
Speaker 1: a way of entertaining other people, Like that's the whole
Speaker 1: purpose of it. They're not playing a game competitively against others,
Speaker 1: which is what a lot of the Twitch TV stuffs for.
Speaker 1: Not everything, but also you have you have streamed yourself
Speaker 1: on Twitch, haven't you? I did. I did for twenty
Speaker 1: five hours straight. I did a stream of me just
Speaker 1: playing Minecraft. It was for the Extra Life charity, which
Speaker 1: raises money for to buy video games and video game
Speaker 1: systems for kids who are in hospitals and uh, so
Speaker 1: I was part of this. It was kind of like
Speaker 1: a Pledge Drive type thing. And for twenty five hours
Speaker 1: I played and and streamed it live, and I always
Speaker 1: had at least one or two people watching. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: would have you know, a few dozen watching at a time.
Speaker 1: UH And I even had a thing where for certain
Speaker 1: levels of contributions, I would build uh monuments within Minecraft,
Speaker 1: and the more money you made, the bigger and more
Speaker 1: rare the monument would be, like the materials would be
Speaker 1: more rare. So some people were incredibly generous and I
Speaker 1: had to go and find the rarest materials and Minecraft
Speaker 1: within twenty five hours and still build it. Like actually,
Speaker 1: I was like, all, so for the first eighteen hours,
Speaker 1: I'm just mining and then for the last seven hours
Speaker 1: I'll be building. So yeah, it was actually a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. But because of Twitch, I was able to
Speaker 1: stream it live and people could check in on me
Speaker 1: and see that I was actually doing this thing that
Speaker 1: I had said I would do. UM And I also,
Speaker 1: you know, I got to have an ongoing conversation with
Speaker 1: folks through chat. He would chat to me and I
Speaker 1: would answer that questions live while playing and and kind
Speaker 1: of keep you motivated while you were doing this ridiculous marathon.
Speaker 1: Sometime around our number nineteen or twenty, I definitely needed
Speaker 1: some more motivation. Not to mention coffee. I think that's
Speaker 1: the wall that they talked about in Marathon ng UM.
Speaker 1: In September, Twitch sold an undisclosed stake in the company
Speaker 1: to investors, raising that twenty million dollars that you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that went to supporting their rollout
Speaker 1: into the PS four and Xbox one. Yeah. Now, if
Speaker 1: you're looking at today's numbers, according to Mercury News that
Speaker 1: this was astounding. Twitch dot tv accounts forty percent of
Speaker 1: all United States live streaming online. That's more than any
Speaker 1: other live streaming site, including ESPN, NBC Sports and YouTube Live. Um.
Speaker 1: This is all according to Quilt, which is a company
Speaker 1: that helps networks manage bandwidth demand for video online and
Speaker 1: announced that they had begun working with Twitch in April.
Speaker 1: Twitch tv receives more than forty million unique visitors each month,
Speaker 1: which I think we mentioned before. But yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 1: Like sure, if you look at YouTube, YouTube is getting
Speaker 1: a billion, okay, but YouTube has Google behind it and
Speaker 1: is adding a hundred hours of footage every minute, right,
Speaker 1: This is this is considering that this is something that
Speaker 1: was a spinoff of another company and has only been
Speaker 1: around for for less than four full years, it's phenomenal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and its users spend an average of a hundred and
Speaker 1: six minutes per day watching streams average. That is also insane.
Speaker 1: That's so not to spoil it, but that's going to
Speaker 1: come into play when we have our conversation of why
Speaker 1: the heck would Google wants to spend a billion dollars
Speaker 1: on the yes. To put all of this in perspective
Speaker 1: a little bit, In February, a company called deep Field,
Speaker 1: which does Internet data analysis for media companies like the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, Ransom numbers and reported that Twitch accounts
Speaker 1: for one point eight percent of United States peak internet traffic,
Speaker 1: which places it fourth overall after Netflix, which stands at
Speaker 1: Google and Apple four point three. That also puts it
Speaker 1: ahead of companies like Hulu, Facebook, and Valve, all of
Speaker 1: which come in a couple tents of a percentage point lower.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing. I mean, now, granted, these are all
Speaker 1: different things, right because with Google, the fact that is
Speaker 1: Google is pretty impressive considering that that's it's text based. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not just uh, I mean, I guess Google that
Speaker 1: probably also includes YouTube, so that's probably some video in
Speaker 1: there too. But yeah, it's still impressive. The fact that
Speaker 1: Valve is so far back is also impressive because you're
Speaker 1: talking about like not just uh, online gaming, but that's
Speaker 1: a gaming delivery service, you know, if people are buying
Speaker 1: games on Steam. But um, yeah, still pretty impressive. Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna next tackle exactly how this whole system works,
Speaker 1: but before we do that, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Alright, so we're back. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about how this company actually delivers live streaming. That was
Speaker 1: Daniel's question, how does it work? Now? A lot of
Speaker 1: live streaming is using a very similar method, But first
Speaker 1: it's good to say what it does not do, right,
Speaker 1: because it's an intrinsically different system than for example, YouTube. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so YouTube, you've got prerecorded user videos for the most part.
Speaker 1: I mean, YouTube has some live stuff now, but the
Speaker 1: bulk of its business is prerecorded video. So with that,
Speaker 1: I would, for example, if I were uploading a video,
Speaker 1: it would upload to YouTube, then it processes and it's
Speaker 1: stored on YouTube servers actually usually multiple servers. Redundancy. Hey,
Speaker 1: we said at the same time, we were being redundant.
Speaker 1: So we're trying to it serve it up from a disk.
Speaker 1: You know. That's YouTube actually pulls the video from some
Speaker 1: saved part on some server or servers and serves it
Speaker 1: up to you when you say I want to watch
Speaker 1: this video now. That is completely different from the way
Speaker 1: live streaming works. And one of the things that made
Speaker 1: it possible was that, uh, this idea of peering networks.
Speaker 1: So I'll get to that, but but also to explain
Speaker 1: how peering networks are different, your basic uh server client
Speaker 1: relationship is very centralized. You've got a server that has
Speaker 1: all the information on it, and then you use a
Speaker 1: client like a browser that then sends a query to
Speaker 1: the server which says, oh, I know what you want,
Speaker 1: you want this and sends it to you. Centralized right right,
Speaker 1: And that means that if too many people are trying
Speaker 1: to access that server at the same time, you're going
Speaker 1: to run into a little bit of lags exactly, which
Speaker 1: comes down on to your end because the server is
Speaker 1: going to say, oh, hey, wait a minute, I'm doing
Speaker 1: this other thing and this other thing, and and it
Speaker 1: resolves and basically a load bar exactly. Yeah, the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Like if Lauren had, uh, you know
Speaker 1: she has she has cookies at her desk, and the
Speaker 1: entire office comes to her at the same time to
Speaker 1: get a cookie each It's gonna take a while because,
Speaker 1: you know, it may be that she has a variety
Speaker 1: of cookies and we each want a different type of cookies.
Speaker 1: So Lauren, being Lauren, wants to be fair to everybody
Speaker 1: and tries to make sure that this happens. But Lauren,
Speaker 1: also being Lauren, gets overwhelmed with the fact that a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of cookie hungry maniacs are approaching her and
Speaker 1: wigs out. I mean, it just happens. So that would
Speaker 1: be an issue of client server. So how can you
Speaker 1: get around that. Well, if Lauren was able to clone
Speaker 1: herself and every single version of Lauren had a box
Speaker 1: of cookies, and all of the box of cookies had
Speaker 1: identical types of cookies in them, like the whole variety,
Speaker 1: we could all go to different Lauren's to get our cookies.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing is that you know, they'd all have
Speaker 1: exactly the cookie we would want. I want a cookie,
Speaker 1: I like this bizarre university. Well that's the that's kind
Speaker 1: of the nature of appearing. So the other issue here
Speaker 1: is that if you have the prerecorded material, you can
Speaker 1: do something called over subscribing bandwidth. Now, that just means
Speaker 1: that you can serve more data than the network can
Speaker 1: actually accommodate at any given time. So let's say that
Speaker 1: I've got a five gigabyte limit on how much data
Speaker 1: i can push out at any given time, but I've
Speaker 1: got seven gigabytes of demand, all right. The way that
Speaker 1: over subscription works is that I send out messages that
Speaker 1: tell all the different clients that are trying to access
Speaker 1: my stuff. Hey, I'm getting to you. Here's some of
Speaker 1: the information. More of its coming right now, but just
Speaker 1: just you know what, do a little song and dance
Speaker 1: for the user. That's when you get the little buffer thing. Right.
Speaker 1: So with YouTube, if a video is buffering mainly, that
Speaker 1: just means that the service has a lot of traffic
Speaker 1: and it's trying to serve all of that traffic at
Speaker 1: the same time. So you're getting bits and bits of
Speaker 1: data that are buffering slowly, so that once you hit
Speaker 1: a certain threshold, you can push play and watch your
Speaker 1: video and everything goes well, yeah, exactly. Hypothetically, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if if, if it has buffered enough, you can push
Speaker 1: play and you can watch the video all the way
Speaker 1: through because at that point you're getting data faster than
Speaker 1: the video is completing. Now, anyone who's ever seen video
Speaker 1: buffer in the middle of a video know that that
Speaker 1: knows that that doesn't always work, you know. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just one of those things where the playback catches up
Speaker 1: to the amount of data that's come in and you
Speaker 1: have to wait longer. Okay, so how is how is
Speaker 1: this peering structure different? Alright? So it's decentralized. So instead
Speaker 1: of having that centralized server that all the different clients
Speaker 1: are contacting, you have a system, a network architecture where
Speaker 1: multiple servers are using copies of the same sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and all of them can take on a part of
Speaker 1: the work. So instead of one server where you you know,
Speaker 1: you're just souping it up as fast as it can
Speaker 1: go so it can work as best as it possibly can,
Speaker 1: you distribute it across an entire network. Google actually does
Speaker 1: this for their search, So for a Google Search query,
Speaker 1: they have an entire network of servers that work together.
Speaker 1: That's why if you ever do that Google search and
Speaker 1: you look and it says it took point zero zero
Speaker 1: zero zero zero eight three seconds to to answer this query.
Speaker 1: That's why, because I've got this distributed network, So just
Speaker 1: think of it as a group of people all taking
Speaker 1: some of the load so that no one server is overworked. Now,
Speaker 1: these servers can be located in different data centers, which
Speaker 1: could be all the way across the world. They don't
Speaker 1: have to be co located with anything or next to
Speaker 1: each other. And because of this, you've got these individual
Speaker 1: nodes which have this peering architecture that they're they're the peers,
Speaker 1: so that each individual server is a peer in this
Speaker 1: peering architecture, and they act as both suppliers and consumers
Speaker 1: of resources. So each peer makes part of its computer
Speaker 1: resources available to the other peers. This is that sharing,
Speaker 1: that distribution of the load of any given computer request.
Speaker 1: So this way you can get a bunch of you know,
Speaker 1: average servers together and network them together and get a
Speaker 1: better performance than if you just invest in that one
Speaker 1: super fast server. It also makes it cheaper because you
Speaker 1: can just get off the shelf parts to build your
Speaker 1: servers instead of buying you know, the next ultra fast exactly.
Speaker 1: So it and Again, this is also what allows you
Speaker 1: to be have a lot of redundancy because you can
Speaker 1: you can get a bunch of inexpensive parts as opposed to, well,
Speaker 1: we blew all our money on this one really fast
Speaker 1: machine that can't live up to our expectations. So what
Speaker 1: happens I mean, because I'm sure that with the number
Speaker 1: of people who are using this service, what happens if
Speaker 1: demand exceeds even this capacity? Okay, so if there were
Speaker 1: no overflow method, you would all get a buffering message
Speaker 1: at the same time. Because all of these servers are
Speaker 1: working together. It's this whole It's like it's an all
Speaker 1: or nothing kind of situation. Now. Uh, the the peak
Speaker 1: use of Twitch was something like ten times the amount
Speaker 1: of the average use, which meant that they had to
Speaker 1: build a network that could withstand ten times the normal
Speaker 1: use at least, and in fact, you want to have
Speaker 1: more than that to have a comfortable buffer. But even
Speaker 1: if it goes beyond that. This is something they've learned
Speaker 1: from their just in TV days, they wanted the ability
Speaker 1: to have an overflow capacity where they use something called
Speaker 1: a content delivery network or c d N. Now, this
Speaker 1: is a specific type of business. It's a distributed system
Speaker 1: of servers, so again sort of appeering network, but this
Speaker 1: is kind of appeering network for higher So you would
Speaker 1: use this if you wanted to create content and you
Speaker 1: want to be able to distribute it to a wide
Speaker 1: audience on a live basis. This is the sort of
Speaker 1: approach you would want to take. And this is what
Speaker 1: some companies like Netflix, they depend upon the sort of
Speaker 1: networks to deliver the stuff that they make. Some companies
Speaker 1: invest in their own, like twitch tv has its own network,
Speaker 1: but again, if it exceeds that capacity, they can then
Speaker 1: say tap the shoulder of the c d N and
Speaker 1: say can you take over some of this stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: for these cases, it does mean that the company, whether
Speaker 1: it's twitched TV or some other media company, has to
Speaker 1: pay for those services. You know, it's not a free thing,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that there's at least a safety
Speaker 1: net there. Should Let's say that that there's some huge
Speaker 1: event that happens on twitch tv that really gets the
Speaker 1: entire gaming world interested and they all want to watch
Speaker 1: it at the same time live streaming, then they might
Speaker 1: need to use that kind of resource because the demand
Speaker 1: would exceed the capacity. They also developed a load balancing
Speaker 1: software called Usher to help out a little bit in
Speaker 1: in high demand situations like that, Yeah, this is really
Speaker 1: really cool stuff. So Usher is kind of the the
Speaker 1: the traffic manager. Right. Usher identifies what requests are and
Speaker 1: how to fulfill those requests in what in other words,
Speaker 1: how how many servers it needs to call upon in
Speaker 1: order to handle the demand that's coming in. Right, So,
Speaker 1: let's say that I'm going to stream the playing uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, some game, like I'm gonna go back
Speaker 1: and play through some of the Halo games and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stream them live. Now, in that case, there's probably
Speaker 1: not going to be a huge demand. There aren't that
Speaker 1: many people who are that interested in watching a bald
Speaker 1: guy fail miserably at playing Halo. Um until you try,
Speaker 1: that's true. But I'm assuming that this would not be
Speaker 1: one that Usher would be like ho Alert the media.
Speaker 1: So Usher, when getting the message that I'm going to
Speaker 1: stream this video and then analyzing how much of the
Speaker 1: resources available we're going to be necessary for to deliver
Speaker 1: upon that would contact various servers to make sure that
Speaker 1: it was covered. And usually we're talking about a capacity
Speaker 1: that exceeds what it expects for the demand. Now, if
Speaker 1: it were some uh star Craft two champions that never
Speaker 1: faced each other before, and they were going to have
Speaker 1: a tournament style game against each other to determine who
Speaker 1: is the true champion StarCraft Too. That could be huge,
Speaker 1: and Usher would then make that determination and contact the
Speaker 1: various servers that would all be copying the stream so
Speaker 1: that they could share it up to UH to anyone
Speaker 1: that would wanted to watch it. So then you've got
Speaker 1: all these different factors that come into play that Usher
Speaker 1: will take into considerations, So not just how popular are
Speaker 1: the stream is going to be, but how much is
Speaker 1: it gonna cost to serve up the live video? Because
Speaker 1: like I said, bandwidth is not necessarily free. And Usher
Speaker 1: can sit there and look and say which one of
Speaker 1: these options is going to be the cheapest. Now, in
Speaker 1: some cases, like with that StarCraft Too example, cheapest may
Speaker 1: not be the best response because they want to make
Speaker 1: sure that their customers, the viewers, are satisfied. So they
Speaker 1: might say, all right, you know what, We're gonna incur
Speaker 1: a cost on this, but what we want to do
Speaker 1: is make sure we have the lowest latency possible so
Speaker 1: that people who are watching are not experiencing like a
Speaker 1: thirty second lag behind the action, so then sure can
Speaker 1: prioritize on the fly. And it apparently the controls here
Speaker 1: are incredibly precise so that you can tweak exactly which
Speaker 1: things are the most important for any given situation. So
Speaker 1: it's very versatile in that way, which I thought was
Speaker 1: really really cool. Now every single server in that peer
Speaker 1: network can actually act as two different things. It can
Speaker 1: act as an edge server or it can act as
Speaker 1: an origin server. So edge servers these are the machines
Speaker 1: that are actually serving up the video streams that we're watching.
Speaker 1: So if you log into twitch tv so that you
Speaker 1: can watch someone else, you're getting that video feed from
Speaker 1: an edge server. Now, the person who is making that
Speaker 1: video is sending it to what is called an origin server.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the machine that's accepting the incoming video,
Speaker 1: so it can distribute it to the edge servers. And
Speaker 1: because all the machines can do either role, it makes
Speaker 1: it an incredibly flexible approach to delivering live video. And
Speaker 1: that's why twitch dot tv works. If it had a
Speaker 1: designated origin server and then designated servers, you would be
Speaker 1: limited by that capacity. Now, if you could actually visualize
Speaker 1: all these connections it would look very much like a tree.
Speaker 1: So as people start to tune into a particular video stream,
Speaker 1: you would have more and more branches forming off of
Speaker 1: the trunk of that tree, so that those servers would
Speaker 1: be able to deliver up the video most effectively to
Speaker 1: those users. Because of course users aren't centralized either, right,
Speaker 1: You could have users from all over the world tuning
Speaker 1: in for any given video stream. So you want to
Speaker 1: make sure that you can deliver the video stream the
Speaker 1: best possible way to any individual user, uh, in the
Speaker 1: way that it's going to make financial sense. So I mean,
Speaker 1: that's why Usher, I thought, is so impressive because it
Speaker 1: can take all that into account. Now, how is this
Speaker 1: actually working on the back end? Like what's going on?
Speaker 1: So with YouTube, you know you're saving two disk, but
Speaker 1: with Twitch you aren't Twitch and justin TV do not
Speaker 1: save video to a disk to serve it up. They
Speaker 1: save the video stream within the server's memory. So the
Speaker 1: video that's going to the origin server is saved and
Speaker 1: its memory, it is making copies of that video stream
Speaker 1: as it's being generated, sends those copies to the edge servers.
Speaker 1: Those copies stay in the edge server's memory, which then
Speaker 1: make a copy of that stream and send it to
Speaker 1: the clients, the browsers that people are using to watch
Speaker 1: the video stream. So it's copies and copies and copies.
Speaker 1: Now that's not to say that they don't save this
Speaker 1: information to disk. They do, but that's for archival purposes,
Speaker 1: so you can go back and watch a video that's
Speaker 1: been recorded previously. But it's not that that disk saving
Speaker 1: things is what's coming into play here exactly while you're
Speaker 1: watching it live. It has nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that it's also being saved to disk. That's that's
Speaker 1: a completely separate thing that's going on. So when you're
Speaker 1: watching your browser, your your client is sending in a
Speaker 1: request via HTTP, so hypertext protocol good, all fun stuff.
Speaker 1: We'll do an episode on it someday, I promise. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it sends the HTTP request and Usher then accepts the
Speaker 1: request because you know, he's a good guy. Uh, then
Speaker 1: he decided I'm sorry, I'm thinking the software Usher decides
Speaker 1: which server to connect you to, which edge server you
Speaker 1: would be connected to, and then the video servers themselves,
Speaker 1: they're they're very simple. They're just either acting as edge
Speaker 1: or origin servers, so they're not making this determination at all.
Speaker 1: That's all the usher software stuff, so and multiple data centers.
Speaker 1: The data centers are actually located in proximity to major
Speaker 1: peering exchanges on the Internet. Now, appearing exchange is not
Speaker 1: the same thing as peer to peer networks. It's two
Speaker 1: different concepts. Appearing exchange is a point on the Internet
Speaker 1: where two major networks end up connecting to each other.
Speaker 1: So remember the Internet is a network of networks, right,
Speaker 1: So when you've got two big networks, like two big
Speaker 1: Internet service provid witers for example, to have a connection point,
Speaker 1: the purpose for that is to allow stuff that came
Speaker 1: from one network to cross over and enter another network.
Speaker 1: And these period exchanges their agreements essentially that say, hey,
Speaker 1: as long as you let the stuff that comes from
Speaker 1: my network travel across your network, all of the stuff
Speaker 1: that comes from your network travel across my network, and
Speaker 1: we're all even, Stephen. Now, this is one of the
Speaker 1: points that net neutrality really makes important. They say, this
Speaker 1: relationship is why we don't have to worry about any
Speaker 1: particular part of the network holding the rest of the
Speaker 1: Internet hostage by saying, if you want your traffic to
Speaker 1: travel on my network, you're gonna have to pay me
Speaker 1: x amount of money per x amount of data. That
Speaker 1: would be bad. That would that would I mean it
Speaker 1: would be bad. It would break the Internet the way
Speaker 1: we have it today because you would make an uneven
Speaker 1: playing ground, and if other networks followed suit, it would
Speaker 1: just become this thing where you would have your the
Speaker 1: the stuff you would have access to would be completely
Speaker 1: dependent upon what originated on your network, who how much,
Speaker 1: or who wasn't paying who? Yeah. Yeah, So that's anyway
Speaker 1: again tangential. But the reason why the peering exchanges are
Speaker 1: important is that by putting your data centers close to
Speaker 1: peering exchanges, you have a much closer connection to individual networks.
Speaker 1: Because this is kind of like the crossroads. If you're
Speaker 1: able to plant yourself near the crossroads, you can connect
Speaker 1: to all those different roads that split off from it
Speaker 1: very easily. It's a very strategic move on the part
Speaker 1: of Justin dot tv and Twitch dot tv. So really
Speaker 1: the only thing left to talk about is the user experience.
Speaker 1: You've got a browser, You've got a embettable player inside
Speaker 1: that browser. That's what's handling the incoming video to play
Speaker 1: it on your your screen. Same sort of thing is
Speaker 1: like an inbettable YouTube player or blit TV, I mean,
Speaker 1: any of those inbeatable players are doing the basic same thing.
Speaker 1: That's just that's just the interface that allows you to
Speaker 1: watch whatever the data is. So really there's not a
Speaker 1: whole lot going on the client side. There's some load
Speaker 1: balancing stuff that comes from the client side, but not
Speaker 1: by not a whole lot. Most of it's on the
Speaker 1: back end. Um and and same thing for the broadcaster.
Speaker 1: There's not a whole lot going on that the broadcaster
Speaker 1: has to manage. They basically just turn on their webcam
Speaker 1: and to use the client and go. Yeah, you might
Speaker 1: have to have a little extra software depending upon where
Speaker 1: your video is coming from, like UH. For example, when
Speaker 1: I needed to stream when I was playing Minecraft on
Speaker 1: the PC UH and I needed to stream that online,
Speaker 1: I had to download another piece of software that would
Speaker 1: allow me to take the video from the game and
Speaker 1: upload it to twitch Live. But there are lots of
Speaker 1: different ways of doing that. And then when you've got
Speaker 1: things like the Xbox one and the PS four, it's
Speaker 1: incorporated directly into the consoles through the firmware, so that
Speaker 1: one that's taken care of it for you. Right. This
Speaker 1: ease of usability, I think is why it is in
Speaker 1: fact so stink and popular. Um and and you know
Speaker 1: there's that forty five million unique users per month that
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier is really is nothing to sneeze. No,
Speaker 1: that's huge. And and and it's not just that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of them. It's like the other thing you
Speaker 1: pointed out, Lauren, it's there's a lot of them that
Speaker 1: are watching a really long time. Yeah. They boast that
Speaker 1: per week as a fall that was more viewers than
Speaker 1: Breaking Bed, Tosh point O and the NFL preseason combined.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, I mean that's a significant audience. And you know,
Speaker 1: again they're really engaged. I mean, if I go to
Speaker 1: YouTube and I'll watch a video, a lot of those
Speaker 1: videos tend to be three to ten minutes long. You know,
Speaker 1: there's some that are longer, and I'll watch those two
Speaker 1: depending upon what I'm interested in. You go, maybe a
Speaker 1: link along the side catches your eye and you watch
Speaker 1: something else, but probably you're going to click away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily stay there for you know, more than
Speaker 1: one or two videos. If you do, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: cool too, but that's probably not the average person's experience.
Speaker 1: You know, like a lot of people watch a YouTube
Speaker 1: video when it's embedded in something else like a Facebook post.
Speaker 1: The typical Twitch user, on the other hand, will stay
Speaker 1: on the site for hours that that average of a
Speaker 1: hundred and six minutes per day that we mentioned are earlier.
Speaker 1: If that's an average, that means there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people watching way longer than that. Oh right, yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And and the demographic that's going to twitch is a
Speaker 1: really desirable one. The majority is under thirty five. I
Speaker 1: think it's twenty one to twenty nine is the main,
Speaker 1: main portion that that's the group of people that you say, hey,
Speaker 1: these people buy stuff. Yeah, you've got lots of money
Speaker 1: and you're probably willing to give it to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you aren't smart enough yet to know not to know.
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But yeah. And it's
Speaker 1: also largely male, although there's a growing audience and broadcast
Speaker 1: group of ladies as well. So we're starting to see
Speaker 1: that that demographic is slowly changing. I mean, obviously gaming
Speaker 1: has been very much male domin Yeah, but we're starting
Speaker 1: to see a lot of females get into it because
Speaker 1: they find gaming just as awesome of course, And and
Speaker 1: as as the community changes and as the general standards
Speaker 1: of the industry change, all of that is hopefully fingers
Speaker 1: crossed going to change gender lines, right, So it's it's
Speaker 1: again a growing market, So that's another reason why it's desirable.
Speaker 1: But I mean that kind of engagement where you're going
Speaker 1: to stay focused on something for on average a hundred
Speaker 1: and six minutes. That is why Google is so interested
Speaker 1: in in twitch dot tv. Not only is it lives,
Speaker 1: not only have they done live streaming, and they've done
Speaker 1: it well, they keep people there. Yeah. Yeah, as of now,
Speaker 1: YouTube has really only been toying with live streaming. It
Speaker 1: just opened their YouTube Live services up to the general
Speaker 1: population in December and they haven't really done I mean,
Speaker 1: it hasn't really seen that much traffic. Yeah. The only
Speaker 1: other thing you can use is like the Google Hangouts,
Speaker 1: where you can do a hangout broadcast and that ends
Speaker 1: up broadcasting on YouTube as well, plus on Google Plus
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. Um, and I've used that
Speaker 1: a couple of times when I've been a guest on
Speaker 1: other shows. Really I wasn't the one using it, they was.
Speaker 1: I was participating in it. But yeah, it's still like
Speaker 1: you said, it's a niche compared to someone like Twitch
Speaker 1: dot tv that has just this huge audience. So what
Speaker 1: would it mean if Google and Twitch joint forces to
Speaker 1: rule the galaxy. Well, first of all, they might not
Speaker 1: be able to. On a federal level, The Feds might
Speaker 1: try to block this deal based on anti competition by saying, hey, Google,
Speaker 1: you've already got YouTube, You've got you've got user generated
Speaker 1: video sewn up pretty much. Yeah, you're the biggest content
Speaker 1: player and you're trying to merge with the biggest content
Speaker 1: streamer and that's really not okay. So that's a pity.
Speaker 1: So that's a possibility. But if it goes through, it
Speaker 1: would mean access to Twitch users to Google's incredible infrastructure,
Speaker 1: um therefore improving the video quality and uh and lag
Speaker 1: times that users are currently experiencing, which I mean Twitch
Speaker 1: has said themselves that they were not prepared for the
Speaker 1: kind of growth that they have seen and that it's
Speaker 1: a fabulous problem to have. But yeah, it's still a problem.
Speaker 1: It's still problem. So, like I said, Google has a
Speaker 1: lot of experience with this kind of peering relationship, using
Speaker 1: it for other things as well. So h So, in
Speaker 1: at least on a philosophical level, it's from from architecture,
Speaker 1: it's a good fit. I don't know how close twitches
Speaker 1: architecture resembles that of Google on a practical level, but
Speaker 1: philosophically they are very similar, right, and it's so it
Speaker 1: could mean really good things there. It could hypothetically mean
Speaker 1: more money for the people who are broadcasting. Twitch currently
Speaker 1: has some four thousand partner casters who who are paid
Speaker 1: for their casts. Yeah, when you get a certain number
Speaker 1: of subscribers, you tend to get the attention of Twitch.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you suddenly hits some new thousand subscribers,
Speaker 1: which is going to say, hey, we should work together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this could be beneficial for everyone. Um, but Google could
Speaker 1: possibly do even more for these content creators and if
Speaker 1: nothing else, integrate more seamlessly with searching with YouTube, increasing
Speaker 1: both ad revenue and audience participation. Alternately, it could mean
Speaker 1: changes to the contracts of these professional live streamers, especially
Speaker 1: considering YouTube's pretty strict policies about copyrighted material and on
Speaker 1: region locking. Yeah. I mean a thing that a lot
Speaker 1: of streamers do is they'll they'll have live music. Well
Speaker 1: not live music. I don't think that they have a
Speaker 1: band in their living right, but they have sometimes playing
Speaker 1: in the background while they are playing a game, and
Speaker 1: YouTube is not excited about that sort of thing. Well,
Speaker 1: more importantly, the music in this reason not I'm not
Speaker 1: excited about that. They don't necessarily want their music associated
Speaker 1: with There's also some control issues, like Nintendo historically has
Speaker 1: been very very protective of their of their video games,
Speaker 1: and people who have put up, uh YouTube videos of
Speaker 1: them playing the Nintendo games, a lot of them have
Speaker 1: experienced takedown because Nintendo said, you know what, we want
Speaker 1: to have full control of this experience. We don't like
Speaker 1: the idea of other people being able to do that.
Speaker 1: Nintendo started to ease up a little bit on that
Speaker 1: more recently, but it's traditionally been an issue, and so
Speaker 1: there's no guarantee that every single game publisher is going
Speaker 1: to be totally cool. That's a whole that's a whole
Speaker 1: other issue that I really wish that Nintendo would get with.
Speaker 1: But back back on on the Google deal side, it
Speaker 1: could hypothetically get other demographics than just gamers into this
Speaker 1: live internet streaming kind of stick. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of justin dot tv in the first place.
Speaker 1: But Twitch dot tv was the one that took that
Speaker 1: was the part that took off off of justin dot tv.
Speaker 1: And now now that people are getting more familiar or
Speaker 1: aware of this, and also now that Twitch has grown
Speaker 1: it into a very usable process, yeah, that we might
Speaker 1: see more people get into this kind of live broadcast platform. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for for events large and small, for for entertainment, maybe
Speaker 1: for for science kind of discovery broadcasts, for news. I've
Speaker 1: seen a couple of podcasts use this sort of thing
Speaker 1: as to live stream when they were actually recording, so
Speaker 1: you could follow along. Now, before any of you ask,
Speaker 1: that's not gonna happen with us. I think in this
Speaker 1: in this recording alone, we've stopped to cough about nineteen times.
Speaker 1: I in fact, had to stop to cough before I
Speaker 1: recorded this line. She actually started the line, stopped coughed. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no one, no one wants that we both have congestion issues.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if you guys were watching live right now,
Speaker 1: it would be cough cough cough cough cough, three paragraphs
Speaker 1: worth of information cough cough cough. Yeah, that that how
Speaker 1: it works. Section took us forever because of me, So yeah,
Speaker 1: we will not be doing that. And even when we're
Speaker 1: feeling well, still not doing it so, but but at
Speaker 1: any rate, I mean, you know this, this could this
Speaker 1: could hypothetically change television as we know it. This could
Speaker 1: be the bridge between network broadcasts and internet viewing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we could actually see very re regionalized approaches to stuff
Speaker 1: as well as you know, more global appeal kind of broadcasts.
Speaker 1: I've seen some communities do kind of a local news
Speaker 1: broadcast for that community. This sort of thing would allow.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the public access in that sense,
Speaker 1: and that it's a live way to communicate information out
Speaker 1: whether it's entertainment or educational or news or whatever. You
Speaker 1: can do that on a specific schedule. The other advantageos,
Speaker 1: of course, it does record the videos, so even if
Speaker 1: you aren't able to tune in live, you can still
Speaker 1: watch it, which gives an advantage over other types of
Speaker 1: live broadcasts. Sure, and it's it's on demand all the time.
Speaker 1: It's on the internet. Anyone in the world hypothetically can
Speaker 1: tune into this. Yeah. So let's say that you move
Speaker 1: away from your hometown, but you want to keep tabs
Speaker 1: on it. That could potentially be a way of that happening.
Speaker 1: Or if one performer becomes very popular and and explodes
Speaker 1: across you know, into other communities. That's wonderful. We're still
Speaker 1: waiting make us explode people, you know, in popularity that is, yes, please,
Speaker 1: thank you. Most of my atoms where they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty fond of where my my constituent atoms happen
Speaker 1: to be as well. So anyway, that's that's the lowdown
Speaker 1: on Twitch dot tv. It'll be really interesting to see
Speaker 1: how this Xbox and PlayStation incorporation ends up, um shaking out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and whether or not the Google deal goes through. Of course,
Speaker 1: all of you guys know possibly by the time this
Speaker 1: podcast goes live, whether or not that happened, we are
Speaker 1: still in the dark as of the recording, so I'm
Speaker 1: really curious to see how it works out. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: really think it's an exciting development. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: Daniel for the question. Yeah. And and also I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, for for everyone out there who uses Twitch
Speaker 1: and is worried about the deal, uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: understand it's it's scary whenever Google buys a property that
Speaker 1: you are very fond of, especially giving Google's habit of
Speaker 1: you know, saying huh, I don't know how to do
Speaker 1: this anyway, and then shut it down. Yeah. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, I think that it could very much be
Speaker 1: an excellent opportunity for many industries. So I think. Uh.
Speaker 1: The other important thing to take away from this is
Speaker 1: the idea of Microsoft trying to buy Twitch and being
Speaker 1: turned down should give all of you Sony PlayStation four
Speaker 1: owners a big sigh of relief. I mean, I can
Speaker 1: only imagine if and Google has someone of a vested
Speaker 1: interest in this. But Google doesn't have its own gaming
Speaker 1: console out. You could argue that Android is a platform
Speaker 1: for games, but it's just one platform. It's not the
Speaker 1: main purpose for Android. Um. But you know, since they
Speaker 1: don't have a vested interest necessarily, and whether Microsoft succeeds
Speaker 1: over Sony, you don't have to worry about Twitch suddenly
Speaker 1: losing support for something like the PlayStation four, which is
Speaker 1: something I would legitimately worry about if Microsoft had bought Twitch,
Speaker 1: I would really be curious to see how they would
Speaker 1: resist that urge. So at least that that danger is
Speaker 1: not on the table anymore. Daniel, thank you again for
Speaker 1: your suggestion. If you would like to send us a
Speaker 1: message like Daniel did, well, if you want to be
Speaker 1: just like Daniel, you need to do the email thing
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