Caffeine Wants to Build the Next Generation of Social Live-Streaming
*By Carlo Versano*
Social live-streaming platforms are to 2018 what social media was to the mid-aughts.
At least, that's what 21st Century Fox is betting. The media conglomerate recently poured $100 million into streaming start-up Caffeine in a bid to conquer a new market currently dominated by Twitch (owned by Amazon) and Google's YouTube.
Caffeine will differentiate itself with a simpler, more inclusive interface and a creator-first ethos, co-founder and CEO Ben Keighran said Thursday in an interview on Cheddar.
He plans to spend some of the new capital on a new studio, expanded content offerings, and a business model that pays IP holders, "so when the broadcasters make money, so do the gaming companies."
Keighran said Caffeine is focused on the surging interest in gaming and eSports in a mostly post-TV world. And the company isn't stopping there: it just announced a deal with Live Nation to stream concerts.
The company aims to "make eSports more understandable," said Keighran. He compared the space, currently dominated by a couple of players, to the chaotic early days of social networks, when Friendster and MySpace reigned supreme. (In fact, Fox's former parent company, News Corp., famously bought MySpace just as a then-little-known company called Facebook was getting off the ground.)
The earliest platforms are not always the ones that become successful, Keighran said.
Social live-streaming is also benefiting from a younger generation less interested in watching TV ー at least in the strictest sense. There are teenagers out there who have never watched "SportsCenter" but know what "Fortnite" is, Keighran said. Gaming and eSports are "quickly becoming part of sports," he added.
"I think there's a whole new experience we're really excited about building for the world," Keighran said.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/21st-century-fox-bets-on-streaming-start-up-caffeine).
CES 2024 starts this week in Las Vegas. It's set to feature swaths of the latest advances and gadgets across personal tech, transportation, health care, sustainability and more. Here's a list of the coolest announcements so far.
Astronauts will have to wait until next year before flying to the moon and another few years before landing on it. NASA on Tuesday announced the latest round of delays in its Artemis moon-landing program.
The Biden administration has enacted a new labor rule that aims to prevent the misclassification of workers as independent contractors. The labor department rule going into effect Tuesday replaces a scrapped Trump-era standard that lowered the bar for classifying employees as contractors
The KC-46 was to be the ideal candidate for a fixed-price development program. Instead, it has cost Boeing billions, and made industry wary of such deals.
Dave Long, CEO and Co-Founder of Orangetheory Fitness joins Cheddar to chat trends in the industry for 2024. He updates us on the company's plans to expand and what the state of the economy has meant for business.
One of the world's largest renewable energy developers will be getting hundreds of wind turbines from General Electric spinoff GE Vernova as part of a record equipment order and long-term service deal.
A moon landing attempt by a private US company appears doomed because of a fuel leak on the newly launched spacecraft. Astrobotic Technology managed to orient the lander toward the sun Monday so its solar panel could capture sunlight and charge its onboard battery.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has announced that 100,000 businesses have signed up for a new database that collects ownership information intended to help unmask shell company owners. Yellen says the database will send the message that “the United States is not a haven for dirty money.”
