By: Marijana Kraljević, community manager, DIALOG komunikacije
Technology is profoundly changing our interaction with food. We’re not talking about just the need of having our smartphones on the table, or the large number of images of food published on social networks. As communicators of food, technology is forcing us to look beyond the scope of buzzwords and descriptions when thinking about how and with whom consumers enjoy meals. Finally, an understanding of what is on our plate and portions we consume elevates the entire meal experience for all parties involved.
YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, with the support of Gangnam Style’s PSY and Oscar winner Jared Leto, recently introduced Nom, a service that allows professional and amateur chefs and food lovers to create their own streaming channels such as Twitch did for video gamers.
In order to understand how Nom operates, we therefore need to know a little bit more about Twitch.
Two years ago, Amazon announced that it will spend more than a billion dollars to buy Twitch, the website for watching video games. The site, which began three years ago, was never supposed to exist. Today, thousands of players share or stream their games on the website at any given time, and many streamers are accumulating loyal audience.
Twitch viewership already rivals the average prime-time audience of some cable networks. However, compared to other online video giants, Twitch is tiny. In terms of monthly hours of watching videos, Netflix is about eight times bigger than Twitch, and YouTube is about 24 times bigger, according to statistics from both companies.
However, top Twitch streamers create large audiences and manage to keep the attention for hours.
These viewers can be converted into income: the top streamers can make money from advertising, subscriptions and donations from their followers, who spend almost two hours a day watching videos on their site.
Game developers and other companies are also on Twitch, streaming footage of tournaments in which the top teams play against each other. Riot Games, the company that produced the game League of Legends, organizes frequent events that attract hundreds of thousands of spectators.
And there we come to Nom.
“Nom is a place for food lovers,” Chen said in a press release. “If you’ve ever snapped a picture of your dinner, Nom is for you. If you have a food blog and want to connect with a bigger audience, Nom is for you. If a restaurant kitchen is your office, Nom is for you.”
Users will be able to broadcast from a desktop or mobile device. Chen imagines people using it to do everything from hosting their own cooking shows to replacing those usual Instagram shots of the food.
Like Twitch, the service will be interactive, allowing the audience to chat with the host and ask questions.
“Collaboration is key for us at Nom,” said Nom’s chief executive officer Vijay Karunamurthy, in the press release. “We worked with an incredible group of chefs, makers, and creators to build the site and app they would want to reach an audience live. Now any creative team can produce their own show.”
Of course, to some degree you can do this already with Periscope or Meerkat on mobile devices (though not so easily on desktop). But Nom will offer richer interactive options, such as the ability for viewers to share GIFs, videos, and photos with hosts.
The next stage of digital communication is here!
