In 2015, Facebook launched “Live,” a livestreaming service that allowed people to broadcast videos to their personal profile, groups, or page feeds in real time. It quickly became one of Facebook’s most popular features.
The native Facebook Live platform is fairly simple to use and intuitive enough to understand: all it takes is a couple of clicks from your profile and you’re ready to stream. However, as simple as it is to use, its features are also pretty bare bones, and while it was a big hit from the time of its release, people wanted more.
When the pandemic of 2020 hit, livestream platforms became even more popular, and while Facebook Live had become pretty synonymous with livestreaming at that point, their features were still pretty lacking.
Enter, Streamyard.
Although there are numerous third-party livestream platforms, not many come as close to the level of success that Streamyard was able to achieve in such a short span of time. In general, Streamyard provided more flexibility and features that maximized livestreaming’s interactivity and engagement opportunities, not to mention working well with most social media platforms.
We look at what Streamyard is and how they managed to come out on top of the livestreaming platform market using simplicity of features and a customer-centric mindset.
What is Streamyard?
Launched in 2018, Streamyard is a third-party livestreaming platform that allows users to stream video to their social media website of choice. Initially created as a livestream platform for gamers, Streamyard quickly became one of the more popular choices for non-gaming livestreamers because of its ease-of-use and its plethora of features.
Unlike other platforms, Streamyard requires no downloads; in lieu of a download, Streamyard simply has users log on to their site and stream from there, with multiple simultaneous destinations being available to users. From here, users can stream to multiple platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, and Twitter. Twitch used to support Streamyard streams, but they’ve since focused on their own native platform.
Setting that aside, however, Streamyard still has one of the widest selections of multiple destinations amongst other streaming platforms, making them one of the better choices for livestreamers who want to spread their influence as far as possible.
How Did Streamyard Become Successful?
There are many reasons why Streamyard became successful in the way that it did, but in our opinion, it all boils down to one thing, and that is knowing what their customer wanted and catering to it.
Here’s the thing about Streamyard’s success and why it was noteworthy: launched in 2018, Streamyard was yet another livestreaming platform at a time when livestreaming was fast becoming an integral part of internet culture. Remember that, by 2018 onward, livestreaming became such an important part of regular internet users lives, becoming deeply entrenched in pretty much everything everyone does online.
It’s also worth mentioning that Streamyard initially tried to compete in videogame livestreaming, which in itself is already difficult, what with the existence of Twitch. The developers of Streamyard knew this, which is why they pivoted away from gamers and focused their product to instead cater to non-gaming, casual users.
But the market was already saturated with those, services like OBS, Zoom, and Periscope were already making the rounds, and frankly, were more successful.
So how do you get competitive?
In a strange turn of events, the pandemic gave Streamyard their opening. When COVID-19 shuttered pretty much every major city in the world for months at a time, people were forced to take shelter at home. To fend off quarantine fatigue, many people turned to social media, and eventually, turned to livestreaming and podcasting to help keep their sanity.
There was just one problem: a lot of the leading platforms at the time, i.e. OBS, Periscope, Twitch, etc., were all quite technical for the casual user.
Streamyard doubled-down on their already simple platform and sold it as is, creating different tiers that allowed people more access to technical functions depending on their subscription package. This allowed even the most casual livestreamer to pick up streaming using their free service and learning from there.
Once they get the hang of it, they can opt to purchase a basic subscription that would allow them a little more control of their stream. Structuring their business model in this way allowed Streamyard to be more sensitive to their customers and their learning curves.
This customer-centric mindset allowed Streamyard to become one of the most popular livestreaming platforms in the market, and it’s all the more telling of their success that they have more premium subscribers than free users.
