Mix It Up is a free, full-featured, community-driven, open-source streaming bot developed by streamers for streamers. Mix It Up’s goal is to provide advanced power and expansive options to streamers through its command & action system, allowing anyone to build powerful and engaging setups for their streams.
Mix It Up 1.0 was released in April 2022. While the bot was initially developed to complement the Mixer platform (discontinued), today, Mix It Up is supported on Twitch, Trovo, Glimesh, and YouTube (pre-release closed beta), and offers integrated service connectivity with OBS Studio, XSplit, Streamlabs, StreamElements, TipeeeStream, Rainmainer, Pixel Chat, Voicemod, VTube Studio, Patreon, Streamloots, Tiltify, Extra Life, JustGiving, Twitter, Discord, Stream Deck (Mix It Up was the first bot to have an official plugin when the Stream Deck store launched), IFTTT, Stream Avatars, and PolyPop.
The company was founded by Matt (SaviorXTanren) and Tim (Verbatim_T) in 2017. In 2018, Shane (TyrenDes) joined the company.
We spoke with Verbatim_T to learn more about Mix It Up, how the bot got started, and where the co-founders believe it will go next.
Inspiration for Mix It Up
Innovation is the unrelenting drive to break the status quo and develop anew where few have dared to go. For something to be genuinely innovative, it must either build upon or rethink an existing process or product. It must improve or completely reposition a market.
But innovation also requires a passion for solutions: love, devotion to a craft, or a desire to improve access for others. The founders of Mix It Up checked all those boxes.
Inspired by a fellow streamer with over 21K followers, BoomSentai (YouTube clip below), friends Matt (SaviorXTanren) and Tim (Verbatim_T), who are both software engineers, asked a simple question: what if we built a bot that could do it all?
“One day, hanging out in a chat, we decided that we hated having to run three pieces of software to run an overlay. So Matt (SaviorXTanren) and I decided to build a better bot,” says Tim. “What if there was one bot that could do it all?”
Giving back to the streamer community
Within four months, the first alpha build of Mix It Up was released with overwhelming community support. And by June 2020, Mix It Up was used by 80% of Mixer users or roughly 18-19k streamers.
“It was an instant success – but we kept improving things. And we haven’t taken a penny. We haven’t asked for donations; we just want to put it to good use. This is how we give back to the streamer community,” Tim says.
Sadly, Microsoft eventually shut down Mixer and pushed everyone to Facebook gaming. But it hasn’t translated into the same experience or adoption by the community.
“It’s a shame because Mixer felt like family,” added Tim. “But when Mixer finally closed, we were able to extend our support to Twitch within 48 hours. We’re now supporting so many other platforms. We’re in beta for YouTube Live, and we support Trovo and Glimesh on top of Twitch (the most popular streaming platform).”
Where the industry is going
Typically, it takes markets years to mature, and the live-streaming industry is no different. So we asked the Mix It Up co-founder for insight into where this may be going and how Mix It Up plans to identify opportunities to monetize its position in the market.
“That’s an interesting question. We are strong believers in that open-source concept. Do something once, do it right, make it open, so the next person doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
With that said, that model comes with costs. Maintaining a free bot isn’t the most profitable endeavor, though Tim believes there are places where revenue can be realized without compromising Mix It Up as it exists today.
“We think there will be opportunities in the near future where we can offer things no one has thought of. There are solutions we can tailor our bot for, like larger companies that don’t have creators on staff but want to create good content. Long term, we’re looking at the enterprise market. Perhaps even versions of Mix It Up that are more intuitive and automated, which could be used without training.”
A booming industry
He’s certainly on to something. Fortune Business Insight estimated the live streaming market to be worth over 1.7 trillion dollars in 2022. And there is a real sense in the corporate environment that a robust live-streaming presence is needed to punch through the noise on traditional social media channels today.
“A lot of big companies are steering towards creating their own content. For example, rather than participate in an e-sport event, many of these companies are just holding their own events, which requires on-staff training and knowledge.”
This is also something companies who’ve adopted the remote work model have also taken note of. Live-streaming conferences, company get-togethers, and product launches now allow companies to reach thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, for a fraction of the cost it once took to speak to 500 participants in a conference room. Tim believes this is why more organizations are incorporating live-streaming into their communication strategies. It also means the industry has a lot of room to grow.
“The industry hasn’t peaked, but I do worry about it growing too large while the FCC has, so far, been hands-off.”
His concern is that in place of the types of guardrails that established mediums like television, radio, and print have become accustomed to, live streamers may not regulate themselves enough to avoid eventual oversight by the Feds. Federal enforcement activity could introduce sudden shifts to the industry that professional streamers may be unprepared for.
“Even today, the FDA issued warnings to TikTok creators about a new challenge involving eating a chicken marinated in Nyquil. The Fed will do it for you if you don’t regulate yourself.”
Chicken marinated in Nyquil? Come on, folks.
Verbatim_T’s favorite Mix It Up features
Most streamers familiar with Mix It Up know the bot for its extensive functionality. Features like Twitch Bits events support, Twitch Channel Points, Twitch Clips, social media support, a Charity Services feature that allows streamers to push donations to their favorite charity, text-to-speech, language translation, and Multi Streamer support are just a few of the tools streamers have access to in the array of capabilities that Mix It Up offers.
And there’s more to come. Soon Mix It Up will be adding support for Donor Drive, Crowd Control, and Infinite Album, as well as hardware integrations for the AVerMedia Live Streamer (AX310) and the LoupeDeck Live.
“We want to be a toolset,” Tim says. “We don’t want to be a streaming platform. We see ourselves as the Swiss Army knife of bots. We maintain the largest feature set of any bot.”
A reputation for putting the community first
Mix It Up has so many features, in fact, including them all in this article doubled the word count. So we asked Tim which was his favorite.
“That’s easy, the Community Commands feature. This allows content creators to create their own commands and share them with the rest of the community. We even have one called ‘Dad Jokes’ which, when it is triggered, just generates dad jokes, which is great and unique.”
But the Command asset also has practical uses, which is why it’s Tim’s favorite.
“One of the best commands we’ve seen in the last year is a command that responds to hate raids.”
Hate raids are when a streamer gathers a group of viewers to raid your stream by posting hateful messages in the chat. Racism, sexism, violence, nothing is off the table. Pretty disgusting. Given his passion for the streaming community, this is probably why Tim loves this command so much.
“We had a community member create this hate raid command, which will clear your chat, switch to a unique chat, and limit feedback to emojis only. So when a moderator sees this happen, they can shut down chat completely, jump to a commercial break and begin taking steps to protect their viewers. This also helps reduce the risk that their channel could be shut down.”
This is where Tim’s passion comes through. His love for the community and the desire to build things that live streamers want and need is critical to why Mix It Up exists and what pushes him and his team to do more.
“Our Discord community is why we do what we do. Our community tells us what they need. When they say ‘hey, can we add this?’, that’s something that becomes a priority for us.”
Rock on, Tim; we can’t wait for your next transmission.
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