Castweet: Our Solutions to Live-streaming Discoverability
Discoverability has become such an issue for most new live-streamers that starting out on Twitch or Youtube Live has become almost impossible. Castweet is aiming to build a platform that increases discoverability for all streamers.
Everyone has heard about the millions of dollars that can be made by live-streaming, whether you stream your favorite game or broadcast your daily life. However, unfortunately for almost everyone, that dream is completely unattainable. The platforms themselves too often are only interested in promoting just the top-tier streamers. They seem to believe that just focusing on the already well-known has more potential benefit than giving a chance for any up-and=comers to help expand the platform. This has left millions and millions of potential streamers alone, streaming to either 0 viewers or viewers in the 10s instead of the 1000s. So, what could be done to help the other millions of people that would love to turn their streaming hobby into a streaming job? How many potential Ninjas have been ignored just to add a few more viewers to those that are already established?
First, how does the average viewer find something to watch on the different platforms?
Twitch/Youtube
- Followed/subscribed streamer goes live.
- Followed streamer is offline, provides re-stream(Raid) to another streamer.
- Top of the Main page features manually selected streamers (normally large streamers).
- Twitch suggests a stream based on the viewer’s habits (not only large streamer, some balance based on views).
- Clicking on a Category/Game they enjoy and choosing a stream (listed by viewer count).
Dlive/Mixer:
- Leaderboard features creators on the rise for the last 24 hours (Dlive).
- Featured “Up and Coming” Streamers (Mixer).
As you can see, the ways that viewers are led to new streams heavily favors either the top streamers or streamers already getting some growth at the moment. On each platform, there is absolutely no incentive for viewers to seek out new streamers on their own, leaving 1000s to be stuck in 0 viewer purgatory. Additionally, the streamers themselves have no means to direclty affect their ranking or ability to attract new views within the platform.
Castweet’s goal is to attack the two main issues of discoverabillity: lack of viewer incentives and enable live-streamers to promote content.
**Note: All aspects of the platform will be protected by an abuse system that will be benchmarked during the alpha/beta test (explained in detail in a future post). Additionally, within the platform, rewards are given in CTB (Castweet points) that can be converted to CTT (Castweet Tokens) at an adjustable exchange rate with daily withdraw amounts limited by the user’s level to further prevent account spam and “dishonest” participation to maximize rewards.**
Solution 1: User Level System (Daily/Monthly “Quests”)
To improve discoverability on a platform, you need to create a way that promotes the viewers themselves to engage with both new content and new content creators. One of the key differences between Castweet and other live-streaming offerings is that viewers are rewarded for engaging with content. Coupled with this, Castweet will create a user level system for both the viewers and creators that will have a variety of benefits from greater earn rate, more transaction power, and more rewards provided to the content creators they view (more in an upcoming post).
If you have played any free-to-play mobile games, you know that a powerful motivator for active users is daily rewards or quests that can be completed by accomplishing different tasks. With discoverability in mind, we plan to create incentives for our active viewers to check out and participate with live-streams that are just starting out. In this way, we can expand the amount of active streamers while giving an actual motivation for viewers to engage with their content.
What are some examples for how the user level system promotes engagement with new streams?
- Daily/Monthly Reward to spend (x) amount of time viewing a newly started streamer (under X level).
- Daily/Monthly Reward to view (x) different new streams.
- Daily/Monthly Reward for “Streamer of the Day/Month” voting.
- Peak time bonus for viewing mid-tier streamers.
- Bonus CTB earning rate for viewing any streamer below (x) level.
- Partial CTB refund for subscription/tips to low-evel streamers by high-level viewers.
- Popular Content Creators who re-broadcast low-level streamers will earn % rewards.
- and more…
Solution 2: Creator Bounty Program
Beyond just motivating viewers to engage with new content, we will also put tools in the hand of the streamers themselves. A casual look at Twitch at any time will show 1000s of streamers basically streaming to nobody. However, they don’t have any way within the platform to promote their own content. Too often the only way to grow your channel is by heavy social media activity or maintaining a daily streaming schedule that is more grueling than your average 9 to 5 job. Even doing this doesn’t gurantee you will gain even 1 viewer. It’s like spending years training for the olympics, but you show up to an empty stadium.
Our solution is to allow streamers to create their own bounty program that will directly reward any new viewers who view their content. After the streamer sets a CTT (Castweet token) budget with their own tokens and a target number of users for their bounty campaign, any new viewers who view for the required time (X minutes) will be rewarded with a portion of the bounty budget. For example, setting a bounty budget of 1000 CTT with a goal of 100 new viewers would reward 10 CTT to each eligible viewer (a small fee bounty creation fee will go the platform to be set during alpha test). Their bounty campaign will be featured on the “Bounty” tab on the main page and will be additionally be eligible for placement on the homepage suggestion section.
Castweet believes that this system will allow new streamers to take control of their own stream growth.
Benefits of the Bounty Campaign System:
- Streamers can directly market their stream to new viewers within the platform.
- Streamers will be able to create a bounty program just from their viewing/streaming rewards.
- Preferential featuring for streamers at lower-levels will increase discoverability.
- Viewers will be rewarded for engaging in content they would otherwise ignore.
- Competition between bounty budgets will improve the overall CTT ecosystem and motivate exchange purchases of CTT tokens.
- Abuse prevention system will prevent low level viewers from abusing the compensation model.
Solution 3: P2P Marketing System
In addition to allowing streamers to create bounty campaigns to market their streams, we will also feature another P2P marketing system in which they can feature their streams to other viewers. Similar to how Google Adsense works, Castweet will feature a bidding-based ad model that allows streamers to feature their stream in various parts of the platform (Main Page, game/category, suggested streams, etc.). However, in order to prevent only the highest level users from out-budgeting new starters, we will adjust the costs based on user level to allow all streamers a chance to promote their streams. Additionally, some marketing locations will be limited only to streamers below a certain level and the P2P marketing system will allow targetting of different level viewers as well. Hopefully, by constantly internally benchmarking the succes of the P2P system and ability for low-level streamers, we can maintain a system that is fair for all users and promotes the growth of everyone.
Main Features of the System:
- Ability for any streamer to market their stream directly within the platform.
- New Streamers will be able to feature their stream in special sections.
- Sliding-scale payment based on streamer level to prevent over-bidding by established streamers.
- Various locations for streamers to bid on to feature their content.
- Providing additional use-cases for CTT within the platform to improve the token economy.
- and more…
Castweet: Improving Discoverability while Rewarding Everyone!
I wanted to write this post before going into more detail about our overall platform to show one of the main issues we are attempting to tackle in the already competitive live-streaming market. Additionally, one of my main points is trying to show how we will create value for CTT token and promote people to not only use their earnings within the platform but also purchase on an exchange for use in the platform.
Next post?
How both viewers and content creators will earn CTT on the platform.
As always, please follow us on our Social Media:
Website: https://www.castweet.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Castweet/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Castweet_Global
Telegram: https://t.me/CastweetOfficialCommunity
Medium: https://medium.com/castweet-official
Kakaotalk (한국어방/Korean chat): https://open.kakao.com/o/g3KMwhxb
Need to get into direct contact with me? Email me at bryanhigh@castweet.com or message me in Telegram!
