Popdog is unveiling the beta launch of its online destination to aggregate game livestreams and other gaming content from around the globe.
As an agnostic partner, Popdog will take content from all streaming services and platforms, beginning with Twitch, Mixer, and YouTube. It will feature livestreaming popular streamers, professional gamers, and esports leagues, so users can find who is live in real time and what gaming content is trending globally.
As more professional people are livestreaming to audiences at home, Popdog hopes to serve as the ultimate guide for audiences who want to find and discover live gaming content as it’s happening, on any service.
The portal runs off a deep analytics backend, which Popdog claims processes tens of millions of data points from esports and platform APIs each day. It says this enables the platform to offer users deeper, algorithm-based discovery recommendations. The first of these is the “Trending” section, which highlights channels that are outperforming their usual viewership, but more options will appear over time as Popdog refines and polishes the algorithms.
Now live in beta, Popdog will continue to update the service with new features and functionality based on viewer, publisher, platform, and industry feedback, which is being collected in the first phase of development.
Popdog is a technology and services company developing products designed to help optimize esports and gaming livestreaming for brands, publishers, talent, teams, tournaments, and other stakeholders. Popdog was founded by esports pioneer Alexander Garfield, best known for his work in building Evil Geniuses and Alliance, before selling the teams’ parent company (GoodGame) to Twitch in 2014.
He subsequently left Twitch in 2016 to found Popdog, which in addition to its technology side has a renowned talent management arm under the name of Loaded. Fellow esports legend Andreas Thorstensson, Popdog’s chief technology officer and chief product officer, is a former Counter-Strike world champion who cofounded SK Gaming, the most successful esports organization and social platform of its era; and SoGamed, the storied online gaming community.