My Thoughts on Moonbeam

Moonbeam is still very much in their early phases of becoming a live streaming platform. Recently opening to the general public in a public beta while a few features are still locked to backers. These are just my thoughts on the current iteration of Moonbeam that I currently have access too.

Clips

Clips are a great resource in promoting your own content to outside platforms and networks. What I really appreciate in that after clicking on the clip button while watching a stream. You remain on the stream, while a new window opens up with your created clip. This gives you the ability to create a catchy title, enter a great description, and allows you to edit the included 30 second clip to what you feel would fit better.

I do like that there is a shelf on the front page of Moonbeam for trending clips. One thing I think can be added is for the ability to comment on clips. It would help in building that community aspect imho. It could also help in determining the "viralability"of a clip when both how many views attained and how many comments the clip is getting. This would also lead into the next section of analytics.

For comments it would be great to see some integration coming from these platforms. Recently the podcasting host Transistor built an integration in which if you connected your Transistor account to your Bluesky, new episode releases would be posted automatically to your Bluesky feed. This is also tied in with comments made on that particular post, would also appear within your episode page.

This could be something down the line but, in creating clips let include the option of a vertical clip creation as an option. I'll include an example from Twitch of this as they've recently released the ability to do this.

Analytics

I understand that the platform is still very early in its growth but, the importance of analytics for a creator is very important. For clips I would to see statistics of where a clip was shared too. This would help in knowing which social network people are being more active on and where the clips are going. Being able to know this metric would help in my own efforts to further promote not only Moonbeam but, as well as the realm from where the clip came from.

One thing that I feel is important is knowing how your content is doing. This could be in the metrics of who is watching, how long they're watching, and when people are leaving your stream. I understand in that we're not going to be getting YouTube level of analytics right off the bat but, an expanded set of metrics of what is going on would be a great help.

Speaking of, for monetization of our content, please do give us a complete breakdown of where our monetization is coming from. I know that there is just Moonstones and when ads make their way onto to the platform, would love to see bounce rates of people experiencing ads during a stream. I appreciate the openness of how the payouts page is presented. In its current form, everything is easily seen in where funds being received are coming from along with how much.

Front Page

I know that this area is more than likely going to go through several changes before a final release version is presented. One area I feel that could be improved on is the realm aspect of Moonbeam. Currently when you look at the main page, you really don't know that realms are a major feature of the site. It's not until you scroll down below the fold that you see the "Find by Genre" shelf. This doesn't really tell you what you're searching for.

Perhaps with the first row being cut down to half its size, we could have the next row being a listing for "Trending Realms" or Realms that are currently live (if they're open to being shown on the front page) with a toggle in the realm settings section. This would give those realm owners the choice of being on the front page or respecting their privacy.

I do like the recent posts row and with shrinking the first row, it will bring this row further up to be seen within the same space. The third row would be the realm shelf. Of course this is all subjective really. I don't have any experience in UI/UX design

Search

Could we add search for individual creators into the search area? Currently it's only for searching realms. Would love to see the results for a particular creator that includes the realm that they are a part of (if they are.)

Profile Page

For the profile page of a creator, would it be possible to make the VOD's section be searchable? Have a drop down for the visitor to choose to see the past weeks, 30 days, highest view, or lowest viewed VOD. Same for the Clips section as well. This would also tie into the search function as above, easier way to find a creator to see their profile page.

Another I'm thinking of, would it be a better presentation to have tabs? The profile default would be to show their posts tab with clips and VOD's next to it?

Monetization

When viewing a live stream, the "Send Tip" button is a good option to have right below the video player. One thing that could be improved on is to have a modal popup if you don't have enough Moonstones. This would make it easy for viewers to top up their Moonstones like it currently is by clicking on the options below the fold of the video player.

This is probably for a future option but, would love to see integrations with 3rd party places like Fourthwall. A button that sits below the video player if the account is linked to a Fourthwall account. Would also be good if it would be possible to include alerts from these platforms to be shown within the video player without having to include more browser sources wihtin the encoding software like OBS.

Perhaps a built-in system for realm owners to find partners with a Moonbeam integration. Site/realm partners from DrivethruRPG or other verifiable affiliates that can be brought in for Moonbeam partners (or equivalent) to have access to via a brand partner page.

Advertising

We're probably bit away from seeing ads within Moonbeam but, I would love to see controls of what ads appear within our streams and realms. I don't want to see Moonbeam fall down the hole of relaying on ads like Twitch has. There are other avenues of making money than just ads, plus it'll drive away viewers having to suffer through ads everywhere. This section would have to be relooked at if(when) ads come to Moonbeam.

Another option would to bring in Amazon affiliate marketing. Twitch did this in the past with the Amazon Blacksmith integration. I'm not sure if this would even be an interest to others as there are other places that offer similar like Kit.co for sharing the gear you use on stream.

Closing

Wanted to take some time here and say that Moonbeam is showing a lot of promise in presenting itself to be something different that what we've seen from current and past live streaming platforms. Choosing to focus on community realms than gaming categories is novel approach of the live streaming world. To have your community realm mixed with live streaming is a great approach as it combine elements of Discord to the live streaming segment. I've seen this done before but in a way that felt more of an afterthought.

I took the stance of a normal user coming into the platform, without having an special privilege. I haven't reached out to Anthony or anyone else on the Moonbeam team for access into places. I wanted to see how the average creator can use the platform and share the experience of doing so. When more areas are opened up to the public, I'll look into how those areas work and the share my thoughts on those as well.

I have a lot of hope for Moonbeam to be an alternative to the large corpo platforms. As there is going to be a lot of work for the team going forward, I hope to see more people at least take the chance in giving it a fair shot.