I have an idea for something to try: An indie web livestream; going to a site, browsing a few pages and moving to another. Is this an idea worth exploring further? Has this been tried before? Or are there too many concerns?
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Would be providing commentary or insight on top of the stream, or would it literally just be flashing up pages and having a look?
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Commentary, but kept in the realm of vibes and design. Sticking to the positives, maybe checking out the source code, but not trying to judge or rate the website on any arbitrary scale.
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There are a while lotta streamers out there whose whole thing is reacting to substack articles and blogposts, so I’m sure that something similar focused on the idiewev would work
Largely depends on the streamers personality to keep up the energy though
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Indeed; streams are marathons, not sprints. So far, my basic concept outline is:
- Commentary, but kept in the realm of vibes and design. Sticking to the positives, maybe checking out the source code, but not trying to judge or rate the website on any arbitrary scale.
- If things look like they’re getting too personal, or personal pictures start popping up, we pull out of the site early.
- We hit up the sites that have submitted themselves first, then we move onto the next through whatever webrings the current site is part of.
- We announce ourselves via the UA with a link to the stream.
- Broadcasting from a Windows VM, for security concerns, to compartmentalize the duties and make OBS broadcasting easier. This should be able to broadcast from a ThinkPad with 16GB of RAM.
- No cam, just audio.
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Have you considered doing a magazine style recorded video instead of a livestream? Was it user interaction you were mostly aiming for with it being a livestream?
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Yeah, like an ephemeral watch party that might be archived. Browsing a site on-the-fly, and going off of first impressions while analyzing the site’s design and visiting a few pages/blog posts.
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I’ve actually seen a few people do this sort of thing! They were mostly on Youtube, so I’m not sure if they were originally live streamed, but I always love watching them and seeing the streamer’s reactions to sites I’ve seen myself.
One thing that would be neat to highlight would be how you found those sites in the first place–a sort of “here’s where you could go to find these yourself” primer, for those who aren’t familiar with the small web.
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screen walks is a bit tangential to what you’re after, but similar enough that it may be of interest. i know there’s a good number of folks that got into neocities via youtube videos and potentially tiktoks (?), although i haven’t seen any myself so i dunno what it looks like specifically. i think it’s a fun idea! like a let’s play / let’s read but with surfing. it seems like an easier/smoother way to comment on/discuss pieces of a web site you want to share than screenshots/text/annotating, since websites have so many components (including motion and sound) !
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I forget the name of the site, peeplo something or rather on Neocities who had built a big website directory would do live stream of website surfing a couple years ago. Not sure how big his audience was - but sounds like a fun idea.
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Thanks for all of your responses. I’m gonna give a try tomorrow at 2 PM CT. If you’re interested in tuning in, I’ll drop the stream URL once it’s live.
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I know Luvstarkei on Youtube has a few videos like that and theres been some rogue livestreams here and there were someone checks out small web websites (there was one I saw which was kind of mean so Im glad you’d be looking to focus on the positives and the designs, cuz I know if anyone rated my site on technicalities I would be burned at the stake LMAO). If you end up doing smth like this Id love to check it out, I dont love livestream formats usually but it seems really nice for something like this.
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Tuned in for a while, had to drop off right before you were checking out the last site but had a good time. Cheers!
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It was a good time. Thanks for tuning in!
I was fast asleep for my timezone. Hope it went well.
Do you plan on dropping a vod?
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It’s viewable from the link above. The audio peaked a bit on my end, so… that’s something to fix for next time.
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