The situation
LetsWatch is a live streaming and social commerce platform. Creators go live. Viewers watch, chat, send gifts paid for in the platform’s virtual currency, and buy merchandise.
The hard part
Building a video page is the easy part. Making streaming, chat and money behave as one reliable product is not.
Every live stream means video being processed and delivered, a crowd of open chat connections, and purchases happening while it all runs. That takes substantial compute, and every piece has to stay in step. A gift sent mid-stream has to appear in chat, reach the creator and come off the viewer’s balance exactly once, while the stream carries on.
What we built
- Live streaming, delivered through Wowza.
- Real-time chat beside every stream, built with Node.js and Socket.IO.
- A virtual currency that viewers buy through PayPal or Stripe and spend on gifts for creators.
- Merchandise and checkout inside the platform.
- The web app viewers and creators use, built in Vue.
What changed
LetsWatch went from a product idea to a working live platform where video, chat, virtual currency, gifts and payments run together in real time.
