17LIVE leverages Ably to deliver seamless, realtime interaction for over 550K monthly active users, globally

When 17LIVE launched its platform, it revolutionized how people interacted with live content creators by providing a seamless and engaging experience for users across 133 countries. However, as the user base grew, their platform struggled to maintain a consistent quality of service without latency or performance issues. Users expected a feature-rich chat experience, complete with reactions, replies, virtual gifting and instant updates. 17LIVE needed to deliver these in realtime even while the platform experienced significant traffic spikes during popular live streams and events.

17LIVE needed a solution that could handle high concurrent usage with low latencies, yet remain affordable as interactions increased. It needed to integrate seamlessly into their existing infrastructure, ensuring data security and compliance with regional regulations. This made local hosting and stringent security measures a necessity.

Recognizing the need for a robust realtime solution, 17LIVE evaluated various options to enhance their chat functionality and ensure a superior user experience.

17LIVE decided to partner with Ably to meet their realtime experience needs. Building and maintaining their own infrastructure would have required significant resources and time, which they estimated at being 4 or 5 full time engineers - delaying crucial updates and risking user satisfaction. 

Andy Tseng, Senior Engineering Director at 17LIVE said, “With Ably taking care of the infrastructure, we can focus our efforts on our company goals by adding new features to enrich the live streaming experience and make our users happy.”

Ably's platform provided a ready-to-use solution that met all of 17LIVE's requirements. The comprehensive documentation and dedicated support enabled 17LIVE to quickly prototype and implement a realtime chat feature. The Ably team assisted with integration, providing SDKs compatible with 17LIVE's tech stack and creating a sandbox environment for testing.

Using Ably, 17LIVE integrated advanced chat functionalities, including 1:1, and 1:many chat rooms, reactions, replies, virtual gifting and realtime updates, into their platform. Ably's ability to scale automatically ensured that 17LIVE could handle traffic spikes without performance degradation, even during peak events. When popular hosts are streaming, there can be 100,000 concurrent users all adding animations, chat and virtual gifting. 

Andy Tseng said, “Virtual gifting is a key feature for us. When a fan sends a gift to a streamer, we broadcast it to all the users in the streamer room. This encourages others to gift too. This would have been much harder to achieve without the Ably platform.”

To meet security and compliance requirements, Ably deployed a dedicated cluster within the region, ensuring data was handled securely and in accordance with local regulations. The SAML integration allowed 17LIVE to maintain their existing SSO system seamlessly.

The integration of Ably's realtime capabilities transformed the 17LIVE user experience. The platform's chat feature became a cornerstone of user engagement, driving increased interaction by 25% and retention by 20%. Satisfaction scores increased by 30%, with users citing they appreciated the instant feedback and smooth performance, reflected also in an average increase of 15% in session times.

17LIVE saw significant improvements in platform performance, with Ably handling on average 9 billion messages a month without incidents. The auto-scaling feature worked flawlessly, managing high traffic periods with ease. Andy Tseng commented, “Without Ably’s scaling management, we simply couldn’t afford that level of connections.”

The partnership with Ably not only met the immediate needs but also future-proofed 17LIVE's platform for additional realtime features.Today, 17LIVE hosts 87K creators providing content to over 500 thousand monthly active users.

These significant improvements contributed to 17LIVE's overall revenue of US$278.9 million in FY2023, showcasing how Ably's robust infrastructure supports large-scale operations and enhances user engagement, leading to better financial outcomes.

Reflecting on this success, 17LIVE's Andy Tseng commented: "Partnering with Ably was a game-changer for us. We were able to enhance our platform's capabilities rapidly and efficiently, ensuring a top-tier experience for our users. Ably's support and reliable performance have been instrumental in our continued growth and success."