DEVELOPING๐จ: Bari Weiss is also now in charge of editorial oversight at MonitoringMTS. Our sources are confirming that despite this being her 4th job (that we know of), she is in fact not of Jamaican ancestry.
X is about to become the most powerful livestreaming platform that exists...
Yes, better than YouTube and Twitch.
Here's why:
- Sharing & attribution to original accounts.
Shoutout @joelcompiles for the brainblast today. X already attributes QT impressions to original posters, even for live (MTS is great at this).
Imagine a world where X also allows users to share your stream to their audience, and the audience can interact directly on the timeline...
- Content is naturally time-based / news
Live is the fastest way to react to news-based content.
- Infrastructure to compete with incumbents.
Livestreaming at scale is brutally expensive. It's why Twitch has never been meaningfully profitable for Amazon and why YouTube subsidizes live with the rest of Google.
X under xAI is building out massive GPU infrastructure
- Discovery. Huge.
Comment section on streams, attribution of impressions, interest-based algorithm, sharing built-in...
Their discovery for live content could be on-par with YouTube's discovery for regular VOD.
- Payouts.
Creator payout program seems to be going well, onboarding is meaningful but still attainable. Streamers need to make $ to spend time here.
X won't be YouTube or Twitch by competing on what they're good at (culture + Google search).
Instead, it should focus on the unique advantage it already has: owning the live conversation.
X is where the world comes to react in real-time. The culture to own live is already built in to the platform, but it won't perform well without strategic focus...
Where I'd build if I worked on live for X:
- Reliability & latency. This is tablestakes.
- "Join from the timeline"
Stop making people click twice to actually enter the stream from their timeline. Include chat engagement, all messages (not just the past 10 mins), and comments next to the stream, as displayed in the timeline.
Allow people to interact without clicking. Encourage the click to create stickiness.
- Browsing streams & replays. VODs need to live on. It is 50% of the value of a stream.
- Real-time captions, live translation. Make platforms compete with your compute advantage lol.
- Analytics. "Viewers" is currently total viewership, not concurrent. People think 2k "viewers" = 2k people watching live. This can be misleading for brands who want to work with creators, a fundamental monetization path for live.
More analytics that empower streamers to know when they lose audience, what worked, what to comtinue doing vs. what to cut.
- Mobile and TV. YouTube is being consumed more & more on TVs, mobile is also large % of social consumption. Live needs to work for both.
The thing I have been historically concerned about...
Video content is not what X users mainly consume. We are here to read things, at our own pace. (Quickly, if you are degen like me)
There would be a bit of behavior shift for users from consuming written to video, and this is not an easy chasm to cross.
But everything else is aligned, the opportunity is available.
And if X invests in live strategically.. they could be the next Twitch. Better tbh, Twitch is structurally problematic
Can't wait to see what happens over the next couple yrs in the streaming space...
Bullish. DM me if you need help building live!
most ai news isn't worth your time.
you basically have to be unemployed to stay on top of it.
there's just too much. the cycle never sleeps, and buried in the noise each week, there are a few things that actually matter.
that's the premise of Lightwork, our new show.
every week we make coffee, sit down, and cut seven days of ai and venture down to what's worth knowing.
we do the heavy lifting. you get the light work.
episode one drops soon. the second coffee is for someone you might know...
if you guess right i'll buy you coffee ;)
Five years ago, it was rare for escorts to charge more than $1K per hour. Now, a handful of women charge much, much more: $3k, $5k an hour. $23k a day. $30k a weekend.
Inside the shifting economics of intimacy in Silicon Valley:
https://t.co/zmPrr2rkCp
Update: Weโre camping outside the new MTS studio with our ATEM Mini, OBS laptop, and multiple analog TVs waiting for them to let us fix their livestream.
Not because weโre entitled to an explanation for ripping off our aesthetics.
Because this is what content bros do: we shoot our shot until the last possible second.
One final look...
@mtslive@eriktorenberg
Update: Iโm camping outside YC with my laptop, Meta glasses, and Jarvis/OpenClaw helping me pull every lever.
Not because Iโm entitled to a reply.
Because this is what I believe founders do: move until the last possible second.
One final look...
@ycombinator@garrytan