Not sure on the ins and outs of it but a Twitter account @watchbrime recently teased about a new streaming platform to rival Twitch/mixer, rumoured to be started by some top streamers like Dr Disrespect. Cue me having watchbrime.com open in a tab to try to reserve my username, although the Twitter account insisted it was just a code amen and it wouldn’t be called BRIME.
Anyway, just randomly checked the tab - it was previously a default parked domain page - and whoever registered it has now put a message on saying he managed to get the domain and if there was any serious thought or effort being put into this new streaming platform, they’d have planned ahead further than just a Twitter account.
It’s here: https://watchbrime.com/
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OK, Let's have a chat.
First things first, this page/domain was not set up by whomever set up @WatchBrime on Twitter. I have nothing to do with that.
But I'd like to talk about how we got here. Forgive me, this is long but I hope it is insightful.
It is quite funny actually because I was asked if it was possible to set up a new streaming service shortly after the Mixer shutdown announcement and after initially brushing it off as crazy, I actually gave it some serious thought.
After all, I can code and set up infrastructure.
Money though is another story. This is not like starting up a blog or something - it is not cheap to build something like a streaming platform.
What about investors and funding? Well, it is difficult to market this to investors since if Microsoft, a company that in my opinion is OK with losing a bit of money on something to remain in the market - pulled the plug. That is a move that is going to frighten quite a lot of investors or potential backers, since no one wants to throw money at something unless there is some sort of chance of a return and if a company like Microsoft can walk away after all their investment, it does not really inspire confidence for others to jump into that market.
With all that in mind and ignoring all the obvious ways it could go wrong, could it theoretically take on Twitch (and Amazon)? I sincerely doubt it and I held no false illusions about that, I said so as much to those who asked or thought about starting an alternative. But the technical side interested me and that is what got me thinking about it and actually keen on building something (without announcing it though) to see if I could pull it off. An ingestion server, transcoding server/process and transmitting it out to many viewers with little to no latency.
That was as far as the idea got at that point and I was not intending on going further.
And it didn't.
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The next day, this "WatchBrime" Twitter account came out and I was told about it by others.
OK, cool! Someone was already giving it a go, I thought.
They sounded like they were way further along than my 'back of the napkin/do it for the experience' stage of my idea on how to do this and the timing was just strategic or highly coincidental. Strangely though, there was no information, the name appeared to be an amalgamation of WatchMixer and Amazon Prime, the details revealed were weird and gimmicky at best and it really looked like some sort of piss-take.
Yet people were taking it seriously.
That led me into doing some simple whois checks. Trying to dig information up because if it was legit than surely they registered relevant domains?
I noticed none of the domains I would have registered if it was me (or anyone with a percentage of seriousness about starting this up), like "watchBrime.com" or variants with TLDs like .live or .tv, were taken.
It's odd because it's really something you would register way ahead of time to prevent exactly what I did here, codename or otherwise and at the very least, before you even mention any name publicly.
I said this to a few people who kept talking about "Brime" and how they really hoped they would pull it off and surprise everyone.
None of what I saw added up to this and to say anything more against it was considered negative or pessismistic by others.
So I bought watchBrime.com and parked it. Domains are not really that expensive.
I did so more to prove a point, that it was not real. I would not have paid the money required for a .tv or .live (they can be a lot more expensive than a .com) but now, I can see others did.
Then something weird happened.
People were tweeting as if they got into some special 'partner program' and even mentioned URLs of *this* domain that did not exist or ever existed.
What the hell? Were people *still* talking about this? Some even started drawing lines between a popular Twitch streamer being banned and *this*.
Then some news websites, reddit, twitter, talking about this domain among the others.
I couldn't believe it. None of it was making any sense to me.
Well, may as well put something up I thought to myself.
If people would generate theories with close to nothing, then what would happen If I added an image to a page?
I published the page and whacked on some analytics to see real world impact, and then watched as this thing just exploded.
Then the regret kicked in.
So, I apologise to those that had hope about this thing as a result of this web page. If it's any consolation, I have been inspired to tinker away on the idea I mentioned earlier as a form of penance and also becaue I really am interested on a technical level but I wouldn't start holding my breath to be a user of that any time soon, nor should you expect any Twitter accounts or other forms of 'teasers', it's just not how real people interested in building something kick off.
In closing, I honestly believe this whole thing started with just a couple of streamers that got together and started spitballing an idea around and the furthest they got was a twitter account. They did not actually have any capacity to execute or follow through on their `snowball's chance in hell` dream and were very likely way out of their depth and it would not have gone further any other day of the week, but the internet did what the internet does. The coincidence and timing of certain events certainly did not help.
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I think redirecting to a Rick Roll-style video or other form of 'gotcha' may have been easier than writing all this up, but I think it's important we understand how we got here.
We started with a weird Twitter account, and then it just snowballed into this mess with people filling in the blanks. Some well meaning, some not so.
If I had not registered this domain, someone else would have.
Would whoever had registered it have tried to get email addresses, etc? I don't know.
But, I am responsible for somewhat wasting your time with this page and/or possibly giving you false hope and I wanted to apologise for that.
I sincerely hope the above was if anything, educational or at the very least - interesting.
Fun and games.
Although there is supposedly another new one in the works called Compose, which is on Twitter too @WatchCompose. Who knows though.