Although TikTok live is a very different world from the actual TikTok feed and it seems to be littered with absolute nonsense. It does feel a lot more approachable, maybe because it is such motley crew.
Personally I don't watch Twitch and have no interest in it whatsoever but it is obviously one of the kings in live streaming. I don't actually know if you can just discover YouTube lives without it being from a subscription so that means they aren't even a contender in live content.
I think I heard Instagram has live discovery but I would be hard pressed to relate to any personality that makes Instagram their go-to platform. Same as I can't be arsed to think of Presidents as anything more than average trash with fancy titles.
With all that said I think TikTok is the only app that just lets any Tom, Dick and Sally go live without too much hassle and even promotes them to an extent. Although the promotion is more a side effect of the absolute worst content discovery method on the planet.
If you are a live viewer you only have two options to try and find semi-relatable content. you can use the absolutely broken search and maybe lives will appear that do match your term. In my case something like "coding" , although that only ever returns a bunch of funny language people.
The other option is likely the one most use. You just keep scrolling, firstly the problem with this option is that TikTok will insist on showing content from your country. I live in South Africa, so you can imagine the absolute trash I am constantly being fed. Then again I guess it could be worse I could be American and get a bunch of blue haired psychosocial inbreds. I could even get Euro, Middle East, Latin content of people who spend their free time assaulting women and children... Then again that is applicable to my local content also I guess... I should avoid my disparaging tangent since there really is no end to it and I am sure no one is safe from it.
I continue.
Regardless, I have always despised the default discovery of platforms being "local" first. I want topic first , this will always be the case. The problem is that these video platforms have no working tag systems. It is as though taxonomy has gone the way of the Dodo.
Which is maybe also why I decided to try some live streaming on TikTok. First there is the case of not actually being discoverable, but there is the chance of random idiots happening on it. Unlike with YouTube, since YouTube you only have your followers, so in my case 0.
Then there is the case of everyone else also just staring at their stupid cameras like some dystopian orphan selection gala. I just figure if I do literally anything that involves moving my head and mouth I got one up on many people.
Then there is the fact that you can just straight up make a few cents without needing to satisfy advertiser requirements first.
All in all it seems a bit like the video equivalent of Hive.
I guess if I look at it , it is a perfect little dopamine gambling system really. Might be why I find it to be a decent playground for trying live steaming etc.
Some gotchas
I wanted to specifically stream from my pc, because I am but a shell of a human if I am not actively doing something. I know for a fact I would detest just yapping with commenters and staring at the cam with no an iota of value occupying me.
TikTok is not actually geared towards screencasting though. They do block your "display capture" option until you have streamed 3 times for 25 minutes. I however did not click the add source option, so like a paluka I did stare at the screen for 2 streaming sessions before digging into the settings more.
Lo' and behold the bastards where hiding the "window capture" source in the add source settings. This is basically the same as display capture but not as flexible. No biggy a person can obviously make it work.
So, I guess that is a tip that maybe only applies to me. Use the Window capture option if you want to do shit while dying on cam.
Only caveat seems to be, TikTok does not seem to like if your cam is in a more screencast size. You know the little cam with big window content. When I did use the window capture they limited my "reach" and yapped about not original content or something. It is my damn code bitches!
I suspect and can test it, that if I actually increase my cam scale to almost half then their little botty can't really make that judgement. I guess I could test it with game capture also. However now that I have virtual cam and display capture I don't reallycare.
Another thing and maybe this is more for the professional influencer gamer bros is that it seems TikTok will ban yo ass from live if you aren't a gamer.
By the looks of it they have a rule of 50% gaming content to use multi-platform streaming. So to stream to Twitch, YouTube, Insta etc you supposedly need to be a gamer.
It is a weird rule which I actually can't find an official source for but most forums report the issue. All fun and games I guess.
TikTok Live Streaming Access Revoked / No Violations – Streamlabs