PubNub, LiveLike Deliver Scalable Interactive Virtual Events

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- PubNub, the company behind the world's leading real-time communication platform, today announced its work with LiveLike to support millions of concurrent users on its audience engagement platform. LiveLike's platform allows viewers to watch live streams of concerts, games, and other events while interacting with each other right alongside the stream through real-time chat, trivia, promos, and polls.

With sporting and entertainment events cancelled this past year, capturing the essence of in-person events is critical to keep fans engaged and maintain a semblance of interactive camaraderie and community. The real-time capabilities PubNub provides LiveLike ensures that they can  handle large amounts of messages, reactions, and data from large audiences without latency or concurrency issues—which is essential to give virtual events and games an authentic energy that keeps viewers coming back.

"Virtual spaces have proved their worth during the pandemic, as the public shifts to a remote-first world," said Todd Greene, CEO of PubNub. "Fans and show-goers are looking for a more immersive experience that can't be offered by video streaming alone. Our data shows that usage from our live events customers surged by 224% from March to September. This proves that people are eager to stay connected to major events such as sports, concerts, and professional conferences despite the pandemic keeping them at home. This trend of virtual events will likely continue beyond the pandemic."

LiveLike and PubNub provide virtual interactions for major events like the NBA Playoffs and streaming of the presidential and vice presidential debates. PubNub's real-time technology allows LiveLike's platform to feel just as communal and engaging as in-person events using interactive widgets like polls, quizzes, and trivia to make events come to life for remote audiences. It provides real-time reactions and emojis as well as direct chat, group chats, and even larger audience chats that allow hosts and anchors to engage with viewers, either on a schedule or in response to pivotal moments, like a goal or touchdown. For example, during the debate, viewers had the ability to live chat, participate in polls, and react to messages. These features give events and games an authentic energy that keeps viewers coming back.

"Our goal is for virtual events to be engaging and energetic," said Justin Poliey, Director of Engineering at LiveLike. "We want viewers to feel as if they were sitting front row at a concert or game, talking and laughing with their family and friends. Now that we build with PubNub, we never have to worry about how to handle audience spikes or an influx of engagement. Working with live events, audience sizes fluctuate all the time—we have to be able to handle any amount of usage and traffic, and we just couldn't. We knew we would be supported by PubNub no matter how many users and messages we were handling."

With this integration, PubNub and LiveLike are addressing the need for immersive virtual events during a time when in-person attendance at large events is not possible. With the maturation of tools and services for streaming events for both professional and entertainment, PubNub and LiveLike are meeting the needs for future trends in building virtual spaces in a remote-first world.

As a result of working with PubNub, LiveLike has expanded their core customer base from sporting to other entertainment events and even political debates. For more information or full details about the case study please visit www.pubnub.com/livelike