Twitch: Lessons Learned
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The five growth strategies are high-touch sales, paid advertising, intrinsic virality, intrinsic influencer incentives (Twitch!), and platform hacks.
Emmett forgot to include hot tubs ;)
I think that last one "platform hacks" may be the most crucial now. Even more so than influencer monetization. If you study TikTok user growth it wasn't just mobile video content creation tools and algortihmic ML assisted curation. It represents a foundational change in the way we transmit ideas via memes. A visual language that crosses cultural boundaries easily. There is no analogue to the TikTok video "remix" found on any other platform.
It's not exactly segregated, nor separate, but actively promoted.
Amazon should just buy OF
Ironically I have been seeing a lot of ads for OF where it looks like they are trying to portray them selves SFW platform...
When it comes to monetization, I am not aware of any platform, service or business that has been successful at both at the same time under the same brand.
I doubt OF will be the platform to change this (or Twitch for that matter, as they rub the line between SFW and NSFW it is clear the majority of their advertisers are seeking them to be a SFW platform. )
The category never seems like it gets above 20k concurrent and that’s mostly for a couple of streamers. Right now it’s the 55th most popular category with 4.4K concurrent viewers which is two orders of magnitude less than the most popular category.
tiktok is really good for finding interesting things about almost any hobby or activity. home reno, biking, weightlifting are what pop on my feed and most of the content is pretty damn good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S61ENc51Z1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgsurPg9Ckw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFeLkeSp_Ps
This basically gives you the tools to develop video memes. You'll often see a video or audio clip go viral and then see a bunch of different riffs on it that evolve over time, each a twist on the previous iteration, in exactly the same way you see image/text based memes evolve over time, get mixed together, adapted for a current news story, etc etc.
This sort of thing doesn't work quite as well on platforms like YouTube, the barrier to creation is too high.
Another component of the innovation is to mix lowering that barrier with a strong algorithm to surface the best content, since you now have so much of it.
Though I wonder if there's any educational/ productive content on TikTok. This was someones argument about the difference between Twitter and TikTok: TikTok doesn't allow conversations/ debate.
Tiktok is basically set up for remixing. You can splice your reaction, or add your dub, or lip sync, or more, and any of those would take less than 5 clicks to upload.
The main explanatory variable goes back to Olds, J. & P. Milner: Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain . J. Comp. Physiol. Psychol. 47 (1954) 419-427. Rat's would press their orgasm button 7,000 times an hour.
Humans evolved to sit around campfires and entertain themselves with singing and dancing. Now almost everyone in the world has their own portable 24x7 personal campfire they can use to connect with their tribe.
I've built multiple services which are completely loved by ~10 people but it always stays there and it becomes a prison. Since they love it so much I feel obligated to keep working on it, even if it doesn't bring in any net profit.
Completely different to how I thought about things. Specially regarding word of mouth. Thanks to Emmet for sharing this. Will reflect. But on the surface, it makes sense
I think this should be seen in combination with the point about "intrinsic virality" being a growth strategy. That is what a lot of us mean when we say the words "word of mouth", but Emmet is making a distinction here to say that word of mouth doesn't happen automatically, just because you have a good product. There needs to be this element of intrinsic virality - because users want to watch streamed games with their friends, or want to share and talk about them, or because they want to share this funny meme from your product, etc. I've seen founders with a vague idea that word of mouth happens automatically like osmosis, that once you saturate some people with your product they automatically spread it to others. Emmet is warning against that kind of thinking and making it explicit what you can control and create to possibly generate word of mouth on the users' end.
Something like: “Be way too early with your hot tub streaming app. Pivot to gaming and then pivot back.”
Next tweet: "Today is the best time ever to start a company. You might fail, you might succeed, it’s a crazy ride either way, and you’ll learn and grow more than at any job."
I do not fully understand but my interpretation: Try it anyway even if you are not cut out for it.
Any other interpretations?
> Don’t start a company. You aren’t cut out for it. And if I can persuade you not to start a company by saying it in this tweet, definitely don’t start a company. You’re buying the economy-sized amount of effort and pain.
It is clear that specific sequence is to test if you are founder material. If you called BS on the first tweet and read the next tweet, you at least have the right mentality.
I hope this kind of gatekeeping eventually dies.
Becoming an astronaut is far harder than becoming a founder, yet we wouldn't dream of telling children not to think about becoming one.
What other people say is an important force. The reason I mentioned Jessica is because much of her work has been to convince people who otherwise wouldn't become founders to start companies. I think she has more experience than either of us, and she doesn't seem to agree that the thesis here is true.
If you wouldn't want to make this kind of discouragement with women founders, you wouldn't want to do it with men either, and I assume that's what sillysaurus meant.
What I got from it was that this is a challenge unlike other work related challenges. For one there’s no comp if things don’t work out, whereas anyone can find a job anywhere and get paid. You’re exchanging time and effort for something which may not turn out to be something people want to buy or use.
"Cut out for it" means you have a trust fund, rich parents, no financial obligations, and/or the right connections from having the right college degree or family.
- Imgur piggybacking off of Reddit & then grew into their own platform
- Red Gifs piggybacking off of Reddit NSFW sites to post short porn clips (idk if it'll be successful to monetize though)
That still doesn't take away the fact that most of this advice comes through the lens of someone who was extremely lucky and "right place, right time", along with also being very successful.
Luck and timing does not take away from success, but it can't be ignored either.
So a lot of the advice given in that thread must be accompanied by extreme luck for it to be relevant.
> Luck and timing does not take away from success, but it can't be ignored either. Why are you focussing so much on luck? Have you ever considered the amount of work they put in?
Sure they started with a rediciulous idea, but what they made out of it, has nothing to do with luck and is a result of thousands of little decision made from that start.
Your posts in this thread look very ignorant.
I will grant you that I did not say "hard work" in my original post and should have. You are right, they worked hard. That was my bad.
And again their hard work and success is _not_ diminished by the fact that they were extremely lucky, but plenty of people work just as hard if not harder and do not find the success that the Twitch founders did. So I 100% disagree that the hard work plays a bigger role than the luck.
If it was more about the hard work, then everyone could get rich, and we know that's just not true.
I know it's not a great part of the "I made it" narrative, but luck is always a factor, and in the "acquired by a FAANG" lottery, it's extreme luck by any measure.
Lastly: next time leave the "ignorant" comments at the door please? We can disagree without insulting each other I would hope.
Hard work is a requirement and not a guarantee of success. And what Emmet Shear tweeted are things that one should do, to increase the chance of success.
Most luck is created by hard work. Recognizing and taking advantage of it.
A lot of startup founder do startup just very wrong and thus fail and thus make the ratio worse.
The way I see it, it's 75% hard work, 25% luck. Calling things luck is easy, but who are we that we can say so? Just by the ratio of successful startups? I don't think thats fair.
Regarding the "ignorant" comment: It wasn't meant to be an insult, but more of an observation.
I think it's unfair against every person who tries hard and works hard to call his/her success luck.