alt Hacker NewsShow HN: Twitch Roulette – Find live streamers who need views the most
Hey HN, I re-launched an old site I remembered back in the day that someone made called twitchroulette.net with a lot of new features and stats and I would love for people to check it out. The idea is you can easily browse the less browsed parts of twitch and find cool and new streamers to say hi to, and maybe make some new friends.
I also added some real time stats and breakdowns per channel and I think some of the things they show are pretty interesting. Check it out!
Comments
Am I crazy or is this just social/financial charity roulette for streamers. Also is there not inherently an issue building the foundations of a friendship on the predicate of one person being watched and the other having to watch and potentially pay the other? If one side doesn’t like or subscribe are they friends.
The idea that people turn to streaming to either support themselves or make friends and people feel the need to help them do so is everything right and wrong with society. It’s nice people are willing to support someone else and wrong that the most supported are often the worst and really we should just support people socially and financially outside of the streaming charity system we have created. I find it all a bit mind boggling.
I'm not sure about the framing from the title, it's like "find businesses which need your money the most" - not a great advertisement
Appreciate it. I don’t use Twitch or watch popular streamers, but sometimes when I’m bored I look up small streamers with 1–3 viewers and chat with them. It’s usually pretty wholesome.
Egalitarianism for Twitch, nice project.
A friend of mine who has streamed for years, maybe garners 3 viewers at the most, but he's absolutely terrible at viewer engagement. Despite having a dual monitor setup, it often takes him 5 minutes to recognize a single line in his chat and respond.
Growing a base followership on Twitch seems like it'd be an interesting challenge considering how saturated the market is.
really fun! already found an MLB stream, someone streaming Age of Empires 1 no talking and chat in emote mode, someone going absolutely crazy on a racing game I think multi-streaming with their audience primarily on YT. and now I'm on a BG3 playthrough I'm pretty sure.
These are really just chatboxes?
Edit: it's a bit different now. Instead of loading one from the homepage, it always loads a stream. And it has a play button on every one of them. Nothing happens when I press it. Anyone else has this?
Very nice. Currently on mobile where it mostly works in landscape. (Unusable in portrait). Will check it out on desktop later.
Love the idea of making someone's day.
Great concept! Brought me to a girl playing COD. She only has me as a viewer.
She thanked me so I stayed for a while lol
Mhm, I clicked the thing and got shown World of Warcraft. I'm not sure the streamer needs the views the most. Perhaps it's a single mother desperately trying to raise money through streaming to feed her ten children?
these types of projects are always fun, whether it is the old youtube videos with no views, or the few other twitch ones like this i have seen. thanks for sharing it.
it would be great to be able to filter by language, but i have no idea if twitch exposes that information or if it would have to be some hack with the title/game/etc data.
and, probably not your fault, but, probably 1/2 of the spins give me a 10-second pre-roll. weirdly, it isnt an advert, but some twitch-related thing i have never seen that says stuff like "preparing the stream" and "an intern stepped on a wire while your stream was setting up". i am signed in, so not sure what is going on there.
anyways, spun the wheel for awhile and had fun talking with a few people. crazy amount of people still playing call of duty, i had no idea.
Perhaps you can add a check to see if the stream is behind a login/agegate? I pushed the random button and got a stream that I was locked out of.
Old discussion has lots of comments too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114103
Similar in spirit to IMG_0001⁰, IMG_0416¹, and astronaut.io² for YouTube but live on Twitch!
⁰https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47308547
Check out a cool real time feed of people discovering new streamers here: https://twitchroulette.net/discover
And some neat global stats around twitch streams here: https://twitchroulette.net/stats
There are some soundcloud and mixcloud versions that might need inventing ...cool concept!
Great idea for when you bored and want to discover new twitch channels. Just a suggestion: it would be better if you can ask the user what their preference is and then suggest accordingly.
Awesome haha, they look so shocked when you send a message, and then I get embarrassed and spin again
Is there something like this for YouTube?
my first one was junk essentially. I don't even think the host was there. They said they were streaming music videos, which is already questionable. Instead they were streaming an interview with a music artist.
Cool concept! Discovery is the hardest part for small streamers — most viewers only see the top channels and never scroll down. The real-time stats breakdown sounds interesting.
This was an interesting site and was the first time I tried Twitch. It seems like video-based social interaction is an interesting field in general, since it's easier and cheaper than going someplace for an event (which is naturally limited by space, as well). How does Twitch work in general? Can you tell me a little bit more about it?
Kind reminder that Twitch is owned by Amazon, which is a monster of a company. Check out Owncast and Peertube for alternatives.
I once scrolled all the way to the bottom of the streamers and it was a little kid trying to stream Fortnite using a phone camera and it kept falling down and he was happy to have one viewer. It was adorable
On the other hand, this might be like buying someone's overpriced mediocre product at the artisanal weekend market: probably better not to encourage them so they drop the delusion and do something else.
Like that time I spent $9 on some guy's 8oz "turmeric milk" and he said I was the first sale all day, so thanks for the support. Felt bad for making him think this thing has a shot.
i am actually even more impressed that you got this to front page
this is pretty dope !!
was the only viewer to some guy playing far cry
Good job
Can we make a version for YouTube as well? I'd love to be discovered haha
Oh my god I love this. I tell every one I load up how terrible they are and to give up now.
I think I’ve discouraged about 250 so far!!
What a wonderful project.
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"Twatxh Loulette"
No thanks. Why would anybody watch someone else consume an entertainment product?
Great idea. One of my saddest projects was making a site to help Twitch streamers get sponsorship for playing games. You automatically got picked if your view count was high enough. I saw thousands of people streaming on Twitch by themselves for weeks with no viewers whatsoever. Surely many of them had families and partners, but I'm also sure many did not.