BIGO Adds PC Streaming

BIGO Live is a video streaming app that started off on mobile and is now making inroads into PC streaming as well. BIGO makes it really easy to stream live video, and is popular among the younger demographic in the Southeast Asia region. When users are streaming, they can receive rewards from other users, who buy “diamonds” to get stickers of items like flowers, a supercar or a ring to give to users they like. The diamonds (the app’s currency) are bought with real money.

A new feature now lets BIGO LIVE stream your PC content, and can capture your game playing while you stream it directly to the BIGO LIVE community. This means it is now competing with Twitch, which is the largest online platform for video game broadcasting. But in terms of content, and stream quality, it looks to be rather far off the mark as compared to Twitch. The frame rate in particular looks to be a little low.

Overall, the BIGO app has faced some negativity as the live streaming and social network nature makes it easy for abuse, with racism, sexual abuse, and other unsavory behaviour clouding the app. BIGO does hire moderators who prohibit and ban any smoking, vulgar, pornography and nudity display behaviors. The PC streaming version would also make it easy to screen share, and a quick check shows that there are a couple of channels streaming movies and other questionable content. Whether BIGO can rise above these issues remain to be seen. Until that is sorted out, gamers should stick to Twitch for better curated content.