Twilio Live is Now Generally Available

Today, and coinciding with SIGNAL, Twilio’s virtual customer and developer conference, we are excited to announce that Twilio Live is now generally available!

Twilio Live gives developers the tools to build live interactive experiences that can be directly embedded into their applications. With Twilio Live, developers have access to a low-latency, secure live streaming platform that allows speakers to reach an audience of millions while providing an intuitive end-to-end developer experience, including flexible server-side API primitives, and client SDKs for iOS, Android, and JavaScript.

What developers are building with Twilio Live

Since launching in Private Beta in July, developers and organizations of all sizes from around the world have expressed interest in Twilio Live. In conversations with these customers, we’ve found that interactive experiences are expanding far beyond the limited use cases of the past.

In just a few months, we’ve had customers come to us with a variety of use cases – from virtual shopping and auctions, to concerts, comedy shows, sporting events, and even virtual fitness classes. No matter the industry or product offering, they are all looking for new, innovative ways to make an impression on their customers or to engage their fans. Adding live interactive streaming to their engagement strategy has allowed them to expand viewership and encourage interactive participation.

Hakim Mehmood, General Manager for Twilio Video recently said, “Reaching (and keeping) customers today is increasingly about building meaningful relationships through engagement”.

Although it’s clear live audio and video can create meaningful connections, its potential impact across industries is still largely untapped. Those who start building now will be ahead of the curve, but gaining a lasting advantage will require more than just hopping on the trend—businesses will have to differentiate their offerings with customized experiences and features that set them apart from the competition.

However, creating these types of experiences is not straightforward. If developers were to solve this themselves today, it would take months to build out the infrastructure needed to support their live stream applications globally. With Twilio Live, we are putting those tools directly in the hands of developers.

As Dmitry Kurbatov, Software Architect at Weve.co, put it, "We have been struggling a lot with streaming Video until we got access to Twilio Live. Even though I didn't have any experience with Twilio APIs, it was like magic. It took me 5 to 6 hours to build the solution.”

How does it work?

Twilio Live is a self-service programmable platform that you can use to build interactive live streaming experiences. The REST API and Player SDK work in conjunction with Twilio Video Rooms to allow you to create streamable content for an unlimited audience. You can create the moderator, speaker, and audience experiences, as well as build interactivity into your application.

It is built on 4 main components:

• A Twilio Video Room where the host and speakers can interact with another one in real-time
• A livestream, which is created by a Media Extension (Video Composer or Audio Mixer) running on a Media Processor. The Media Extension captures the media content from the video room, formats it, and produces the livestream. You can use the Video Composer to capture both audio and video, or use the Audio Mixer if your content is audio-only.
• A PlayerStreamer to send the live stream's content to a web or mobile application using the Player SDK
• Player SDK to receive and display the content from the PlayerStreamer in a web, iOS, or Android application

Interested in building interactive live streaming into your apps? Check out this how-to guide, this tutorial blog, or dive directly into the Twilio Live docs to start building today!

Twilio Live at SIGNAL

If you are interested in knowing more about Twilio Live, don’t miss out on the SIGNAL Talk on Wednesday, October 20th at 1pm PST!

Looking ahead

We are excited about the interest from the developer community around Twilio Live and look forward to seeing the new use cases it will support and the applications you will build in the future.

This is just the beginning of our journey. There’s a blue ocean of innovation ahead of us whose surface we have just started to scratch. Twilio is here to help you bring the future of online interactions to reality.

Now, more than ever, we cannot wait to see what you build!