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Show HN: Strimpack – roll your own livestreaming portal, chat, subs, and forum

by j4pe on 5/11/18, 6:15 PM with 53 comments

  • by SCdF on 5/11/18, 9:35 PM

    > And because the livestreaming platforms [obviously referring to Twitch] take an egregious chunk of the money people tip streamers, even after they've ground their way to "partnered" status.

    > The application has lots of external dependencies. In particular, you need: > Twitch - a Twitch account with an application registered on their developer console.

    I'd be really interested to see what happened if a popular streamer used a platform like this to completely bypass how Twitch supports itself, while still using Twitch's bandwidth / services / etc. Presumably Twitch would ignore it until it became a problem, and then change their TOS to disallow it.

  • by soared on 5/11/18, 9:28 PM

    How convenient - I just finished a rough mockup for a site that matches this perfectly. (Livestream / live podcasts for color commentary / announcing during live sports)

    https://datastudio.google.com/reporting/1sSM6zloqJ4eGOywLD4n...

  • by jacquesm on 5/12/18, 5:05 PM

    Setting up a live streaming site is easy, we did whitelabel sites for Camarades.com a long time ago. The hard part is - just like with chatroulette clones - to keep it clean (if that's your objective). If you don't keep a very good eye out you'll be running a fetish porn site in an eyeblink, and possibly an illegal one at that.
  • by jpwagner on 5/11/18, 6:45 PM

    Love the narrative style!

      setup instructions
    
      1. Get a server. Not a tiny one.
      ...
  • by emehrkay on 5/11/18, 8:01 PM

    Yes, interviewing does suck. Cool project and I hope that it gets you noticed. I love seeing these cool one-off, hyper focused things on github.
  • by KaoruAoiShiho on 5/11/18, 6:51 PM

    Ohh haha. I thought this was a replacement for twitch or similar, but it's just the chat/subs/forum, the most important part, the live streaming, is not part of this project.
  • by lyonlim on 5/11/18, 11:44 PM

    Looks awesome.

    At my company [1], we work with organizations who do livestreaming to enable live Q&A, moderated chats and polls. If anyone's interested in hooking up such interactivity to your own livestreams, drop me a message!

    [1] https://www.pigeonholelive.com

  • by michaelgreen on 5/11/18, 7:04 PM

    I would say if you really wanted to make this easier for streamers to use you could use helm to package up a kubernetes configuration (a bit of work) and then put it into something like google cloud launcher so you could just point and click to set this up.
  • by bo1024 on 5/12/18, 3:25 PM

    Really cool but I have a question: Does the site ask users to connect to any third-party domains or run javascript from third parties? If so, what information do they get about users?
  • by heroprotagonist on 5/11/18, 10:09 PM

    This is effectively what I have seen a couple of somewhat popular YouTube shows do to combat the toxicity of the platform. Embed the live video in their page, and provide their own realtime chat to the stream on their own site, complete with merch store/other content/etc.

    I think with Twitch it's not really necessary. The community itself is generally, with exceptions, not toxic (being curated by streamers).

    The 'who made this and why' seems to indicate some minor antagonism for the platform financials. Their take on bits transactions is definitely abhorrent, but they haven't blocked 3rd party transactions yet. People know they are getting screwed when they buy bits, but they have other options.

    I hated bits when they came out, but they fill a bit of a niche role that a streamlabs/paypal donation doesn't. If the end goal is to shift money from viewer to streamer, bits smooths a few obstacles.

    Once a bits purchase is made, they can be spent on any streamer instead of repeating the transaction for every person. The actual tip itself is an almost frictionless transaction, just a few keystrokes in the chatbox. This avoids the bounce rates seen when a user has to open a separate browser window, possibly log into paypal, or providing information to a third party site, etc. Most streamers I've discussed this with privately have said that they agree on the rates, but that it's still been a net benefit (sorry, this is just anecdotal). The worry of course is that it's a precursor to complete control of transactions (eg, banning paypal/streamlabs/etc) despite claims this won't occur.

    But all of that aside.. I think the project would get a lot more traction if you at least appeared to try to work WITH the platform instead of against it.

    There's a lot of value you can add here just to augment the system instead of combating it. Help the streamer build their online profile. Some thoughts:

    * Keep the in-line stream, embedded with the Twitch chat if possible.

    * Build a CMS system for the streamer to showcase custom content while he or she is offline.

    * Add a merch store or integration.

    * Embed the streamer's twitter feed.

    * Show off their Discord.

    * Keep the forum.

    * Add a tool to sync up community permissions across various tools (twitch permission, discord, steam groups, etc).

    * Show off their YouTube content.

    * Add a calendar

    * Show when the streamer's friends are online and streaming.

    * Make all of this modular so streamers can pick-and-choose

    * Optional WYSIWYG style edits (I know, but.. it makes this more accessible to users)

    There's a lot more. Some of the above may be bad ideas, and I'm certain some are not for every streamer (and I don't think should just turn on all-of-the-things if they did exist).

    I love the idea of giving streamers a way to build further upon their Twitch audience. It could increase engagement and help Twitch. It could also help reduce a streamer's dependency on a single platform, eventually, without outright confronting that platform.

  • by articlespub on 5/11/18, 9:00 PM

    Awesome!
  • by aseoconnor on 5/11/18, 6:50 PM

    Taking on twitch? I dig it