Stream VOD Link here: https://www.youtube.com/live/XEmB8RDck_I
Stream Management ⚙️
A little wack, the stream manager window shows your views and stats and you can't really hide it like Twitch lets you (since live numbers can be distracting/tilting). I could zoom in a ton on the page to just try and hide the viewer numbers and stats, but not a great solution.
Also was scared of any music getting played nuking the channel - spotify has a bug where when it finishes a playlist such as the DMCA-free Streambeats, it will start randomly playing other similar vibe music that isn't even from the same artist. I even already had autoplay turned off, so I can't just set it and forget which made me a bit paranoid...
Internet Disconnects 🌐
Massive win for Youtube over Twitch for this! Telstra cut out my internet briefly (confirmed via BFD failures in modem log file) for a couple minutes, and the stream recovered, and chat was able to catch up with no delay. 99% of chat came back in quickly (views went from 150 -> 30 -> 60 -> 90 -> 120 -> 149 over the next few mins) so it didn't kick out most of the people like Twitch does!
Chat 💬
I think it's alright, but missed the twitch emotes. Standard youtube emotes just aren't the same, and future streams absolutely should setup 7tv or similar! The batched scrolling of chat is better than it used to be, but it desyncs between different windows so can get disorienting. Twitch's chat is overall much, much better still even with the improved scrolling youtube has now.
Moderation ⚔️
Had our first hate mail from what seemed to be kids angry at streamers not having a real job. They also liked dinosaurs and were underage, and said as much. Funny but couldn't see much in the way of how to fully ban - youtube instead has a "hide" feature for the messages which seems to act mostly as a ban?
The moderation tools seem very barebones and require more effort on the streamer/mod side. There isn't a thing like holding messages or ban evader detection like twitch has.
Numbers 🔢
Reached peak of stream CCV at ~184 about 1:03h in This hovered within ~10 people until ~4h, where I then booted up Shenzhen I/O and it declined to 125 over the next 4 hours of me being delirious trying to force the square peg in the circle hole. Overall, about 1/3 to 1/4 of the Twitch CCV which makes sense for an irregular stream schedule.
+4 Subscribers gained from the stream. Seems like discoverability really just doesn't exist for streams at all. There were plenty of people that were already subscribed from the videos coming in to say how happy they were to catch a stream though! There were a few mentions of Youtube pushing the stream to the top of their subscription feed. So it's good at converting subscribed video views into live views, but not organically live views from new viewers.
Watch hours seemed to be: 1.3K! This is massively helpful for increasing the watch hour requirement for monetisation, a few more streams and that'd be that fulfilled.
Overall, neat try! Thank you for the support! We'll probably do another one next week
VOD
The VOD is easy to go through, and will always have the chat replay there instead of expiring after 60 days like Twitch would, so win for YT there.
The vod is also actually getting reccomended and watched after the stream is finished compared to Twitch, with about 90 views 9 hours after stream ends, and adding 187 watch hours on top! Pretty decent for a small YT channel and a livestream VOD.
