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).
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
It’s an annual tradition: the Fed’s banking ‘stress test.’ A year after the regional banking crisis, there are good reasons to make sure they’re prepped.
Summer is upon us, which means weddings, trips overseas, and trips to see Taylor Swift. Avoid a “Cruel Summer” with these budget-friendly tips and tricks.
