2 min

Twilio announced the launch of Twilio Live on Wednesday. The new service is a cloud-based platform that will allow businesses to embed live, interactive audio and video streaming in apps.

Hakim Mehmood, the general manager of voice and video at Twilio said that the rise of virtual experiences and the popularity of apps like TikTok and Clubhouse, signal that consumers are ready to be engaged using live audio and video streaming.

Videos produced for education or engagement purposes are usually long or short clips to be consumed by everyone, ignoring the personal experiences of individuals.

Fresh and exciting

Using Twilio Live, businesses can conduct live conferences within their apps to present more than educational videos. They can set up Q&A sessions for employees and other users to open communication with customers.

Mehmood says that Twilio Live gives businesses the ‘building blocks’ to create personalized experiences for their communities while interacting with customers in a new and exciting way.

The platform leverages Twilio’s infrastructure to reduce latency in video streaming and audio streaming on a large scale, allowing businesses and brands to customize what the platform offers them.  

Reddit Talk

The platform can be embedded, skinned, and adapted to whatever app it is integrated with. For instance, the Twilio Live team is working with Reddit to build Reddit Talk, an audio-meeting feature that may launch later this year.

The new feature is already available to a few moderators to activate. When the chat is live, anyone can join but only listen in with reaction emojis.

Listeners can raise their hands to get permission to speak from the host, who can also mute or remove them. The platform is slated to be part of what the Reddit communities need: a place to hang out, do Q&A sessions, give lectures and more.