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by Mirioron 2195 days ago
>Does anyone here know how video platforms like Twitch managed to get started considering how expensive cloud data transfer pricing is?

A very high quality stream at the start of Twitch was 2500 kbps. Viewership numbers were much smaller. This meant that bandwidth costs were significantly lower.

Back then ad revenue was much higher per user. Ad block wasn't common and I'm pretty sure ads paid more. This essentially allowed Twitch (and YouTube) to grow to become big enough.

Streaming sites before Twitch/JustinTV were even lower video quality. Eg livestream. We're talking about 480p looking good in comparison. Even the audio quality on those was poor.

Twitch actually had a great competitor in own3d.tv, but they had a lot of trouble paying out to the streamers. That eventually sank them.
2 comments
detaro 2195 days ago
JustinTV also started on AWS and then moved out to their own, cheaper infrastructure when they grew. And then presumably back at some point.
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pratnala 2195 days ago
Adblock doesn't work on Twitch though
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Svenskunganka 2195 days ago
It does, if you use e.g uBlock Origin. Twitch is actively trying to circumvent adblockers but so far hasn't been able to topple the more advanced blockers, even though they released SureStream[1] almost 4 years ago which is supposed to "weave" the ad directly into the source stream.

In the announcement[2] they mentioned:

> We are well aware that many dedicated Twitch viewers use software that bypasses ads, and the rollout of this technology will reduce the efficacy of such software. As a company we are agnostic when it comes to the use of this software. You are free to use it, or not, as you see fit.

I suspect that either advertisers or streamers aren't using SureStream or that it's quite resource expensive to "weave" ads into the source stream so Twitch simply isn't using it when the cost of doing so is more than it generates in ad revenue.

[1]: https://twitchadvertising.tv/ad-products/surestream/

[2]: https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2016/11/02/introducing-sure-stream...

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Mirioron 2195 days ago
Works for me (or maybe steamers aren't running ads anymore?) But it certainly used to work for a long time.
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