Product
In-App Voice and Video Calling: Complete Implementation Guide for Product Managers
We've all been in the situation where we're typing out a message in an app and think, "actually, I just need to call this person." In-app voice and video calling is how you add this functionality to your product. With in-app video, your users can talk to each other without jumping to a different app.
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13 min read
Community Sift Moderation Alternatives – Top 6 Competitors Compared
Community Sift has been one of the most purpose-built content moderation platforms for gaming and online communities. If you're evaluating whether it's still the right fit, or your trust and safety team is looking at what else is out there, this guide gives you an honest comparison of the strongest moderation alternatives available today. We'll
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8 min read
Shipping WebRTC Video From a $10 Microcontroller: Challenges Building the Stream Video ESP32 SDK
We recently open-sourced the Stream Video ESP32 SDK — an SDK that lets an ESP32-S3 or ESP32-P4 join a Stream Video call, capture camera and microphone input, encode H.264 + Opus in real-time, and publish it over WebRTC. Someone on a browser or mobile device can then see and hear the ESP32 live. If you're
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15 min read
Where LLM Training Data Comes From (And Why It Matters)
Everyone talks about models. New architectures, larger parameter counts, faster inference—those tend to dominate the conversation. But if you're actually building AI systems (or evaluating vendors), you quickly realize something else matters more: The data. Not just how much of it you have, but where it comes from, how it's processed, and how it evolves
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4 min read
Stream’s AI Moderation Roadmap: What We’re Building Next
Moderation has quietly become one of the hardest problems in modern apps. As chat, feeds, and real-time video interactions expand globally, the challenge isn’t just catching bad content; it’s doing it in real time, across languages, with context, and at scale. At Stream, we’ve been investing deeply in solving that problem. This roadmap is a
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4 min read
How to Build a Chat or Messaging App: Architecture, WebSockets, & Scaling
Chat looks simple. A user types a message, and it appears on the other person's screen. Ship it. At Stream, we know it's anything but. WebSockets. Persistence. Message ordering. Offline sync. Presence at scale. File uploads. Emojis. All of it is table stakes for any chat or messaging app, and all of it is a
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24 min read
Stream vs. CometChat: The Definitive Comparison (2026)
Stream and CometChat are two of the most-evaluated platforms for teams building real-time communication into their products. Both offer APIs, SDKs, and UI components for messaging, audio, and video. But they are built around different philosophies:Â Stream is engineered for deep customization and extreme scale, CometChat is designed to get you to production fast with
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8 min read
Mux Alternatives – Comparing the Top 9 Competitors
Mux is a video infrastructure API built for developers who want to ship video fast without managing encoding pipelines. It handles ingest, storage, adaptive delivery, and analytics — and stays out of everything above that layer. That's the right tradeoff for a lot of teams. It's not the right one for all of them. Here's
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14 min read
Ultimate Guide to Live Commerce: Features, Benefits & Examples
The Home Shopping Network (HSN) pioneered live commerce in the ’70s, which means we’re due for an eCommerce renaissance right about now. By blending entertainment with instant purchasing, live shopping offers brands, retailers, and online marketplaces the opportunity to build stronger engagement and loyalty with their audience. What is Live Commerce? Live commerce combines the
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22 min read