Backed by $46 million from Andreessen Horowitz and Greylock Partners, a team of former Apple engineers and executives have officially launched a new social broadcasting platform today called ‘Caffeine’, that takes on the likes of Amazon’s Twitch and Google’s YouTube Gaming, TechCrunch is reporting.
Caffeine, which has been co-founded by former Product Design Lead for Apple TV Ben Keighran and Senior User Experience Designer at Apple Sam Roberts, has developed its own publication tool in the form of a free 10 MB download, which makes getting started with streaming easier for the casual gamer.
The software allows gamers to start streaming from their Windows PC with a single click. In addition, users can also live stream their content from their web browser or their iPhone.
Keighran explains that on Caffeine, users follow other people, like friends from Facebook or Twitter or other streamers they like. In the main feed, you’re then shown live videos from those you follow alongside other human-curated suggestions.
“There’s about 800 million gamers out there, but there’s roughly 2 million content creators a month on Twitch. We think a lot of people would like to create a broadcast of their video game, but it’s a bit of a pain to do right now,” explains Keighran. “You’ve got to download third-party software; you have to set bitrates, IP addresses, stream keys. You have to have an elaborate set-up with potentially multiple screens,” he says.
To learn more about the service, click here.
