Socio event platform enhances live stream experiences with Amazon IVS

Empowering event organizers with sophisticated digital platforms is more essential than ever before. Event organizers need a variety of platform features to successfully power their virtual and hybrid events–from top quality live streaming, custom mobile apps, intuitive session navigation, activity tracking, and forums for attendees and presenters to network. Socio offers an easy path to building out a robust virtual or hybrid event with white labeled amenities that give events hosted on their platform extra polish. To equip its rapidly growing user base with the most streamlined and cohesive experience, Socio integrated its platform with Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS), which provides high-quality, low latency live video streaming at scale.

Socio UI shown on a laptop and phone.

“As an event tech company, our focus is on helping planners, so when they had to pivot to fully virtual event production, we prioritized the development of supportive features, with live streaming at the top of the list. When we discovered Amazon IVS, it seemed like a no-brainer to adopt. Unlike other solutions, users can stay within the event platform during streams for a more engaging experience; it’s also highly scalable and we don’t have to worry about stream quality or stability,” said Alihan Ozbayrak, Co-founder and CTO of Socio Labs.

From large-scale events with 10,000 attendees to smaller gatherings, Socio serves a wide range of events for corporations, associations, nonprofits, and other organizations in more than 80 countries. Key features include centralized agendas, live video, gamification, and interactive chats or Q&A sessions. Planners can administer the platform in-house, or contract Socio’s Professional Services team to handle everything from stream management to speaker training, depending on budget and level of comfort with technology. With offices in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Turkey, Socio provides ongoing support to a global customer base, which makes good use of the expansive infrastructure footprint of Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The National Speaker Association (NSA) leveraged the Socio RTMP Player to power live streams at their first-ever hybrid event, Winter Workshop 2021.

In addition to an intuitive interface, the platform delivers low latency video with help from IVS, which made it the standout choice for Socio’s content distribution. Ozbayrak noted, “Latency is really important in live events, especially for speakers who might be looking at chats or fielding questions while speaking. The closer to real-time we can deliver, the better the experience will be overall, and Amazon IVS allows us to simulate an in-person scenario. This is also important for accessibility because captions can be more closely synced to the video content for the hearing impaired or attendees who speak other languages.”

Vetsource’s production team at their internal virtual conference utilized Socio’s RTMP Player to combine pre-recorded videos with presenters’ live introductions and post-session Q&A.

With IVS, the team was able to build an RTMPS URL and stream key directly into the Socio virtual event backend, streamlining distribution of video content through the robust AWS network. The process of integrating Socio with Amazon IVS was completed in less than one month, including testing. Socio Lead Backend Engineer Mete Kabak explained, “Implementation of Amazon IVS was really straightforward, and the SDK was good. We spent most of our time building pieces for our own platform. Now we’re looking at how incorporating other AWS solutions into our pipeline could further benefit our customers.”

For more information about Amazon IVS, visit: https://aws.amazon.com/ivs/

To discover how Socio powers successful in-person, virtual, and hybrid events, visit socio.events.