Improving the video streaming experience with Huawei Cloud

Who owns and controls the direction of the video content we consume every day?

For decades, a handful of large broadcasters and production companies were responsible for all audio-visual output that people watched on TV or in cinemas, and everything that played on the radio, while the rest of us consumed it – passively.

That’s not to say nobody outside of these businesses created any content – they did, with technology such as camcorders. The resulting recordings, however, would normally only be shown to close relatives and friends – it earned the name “home video” for a reason.

In the mid-2000s, that started to change. Video streaming platforms like YouTube and Vimeo, combined with mainstream access to technology like digital cameras and built-in webcams, enabled anyone to film content and upload it for anyone to watch. Some years later, it became a launch pad for singers and other personalities to achieve success and celebrity status.

Content creation is now more distributed than it has ever been. It’s also more diverse, from individual contributors to the traditional media of old. Which brings us full circle – who owns all this content now that the creator base is so broad? Who gets to decide what happens next?

For next-generation streaming platform myco the answer is simple: the future of entertainment belongs not to content creators, but to the viewers themselves. This isn’t wishful thinking – it’s already happening at the fringes of entertainment innovation and myco is at the forefront.

Tariq Jaser, co-founder and chief marketing officer at myco shared how he built myco to flip the script, to reward viewers for their time and creativity and to give them a voice with a mission to turn audiences from background players into active stakeholders.

Ambition meets technology

myco is a Dubai-headquartered company that, according to co-founder Tariq Jaser, brings together watch-and-earn mechanics, community-driven content, and Web3 innovation to empower both creators and viewers.

The platform is focused on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region but has a global user base. Today, more than 40 million people have joined myco, and over 2,000 creators are streaming live sports, original films and premium content.

“The value we bring lies in local relevance, creator empowerment, and new monetisation models,” says Jaser. “Whether it's through live sports streaming, original entertainment, or user-generated content, myco connects communities – not just through content, but through shared value.”

“At its core, myco represents a cultural and technological bridge between the MENA region and the evolving digital economy,” he continues. “We're building a platform that celebrates regional creativity while giving it global visibility.”

Achieving all this isn’t without its challenges, though. As Jaser explains, there were significant hurdles to its growth, primarily in the areas of scalability, latency, and actionable intelligence.

“When you’re scaling a digital media company across multiple countries with very different infrastructures, the challenges go beyond just streaming. You’re dealing with massive volumes of data, diverse viewing habits, multiple content partners, live events, and an audience that expects seamless experiences everywhere.”

To achieve this, the company searched for a partner that could support its ambitions, ultimately choosing Huawei and specifically its Cloud MetaStudio product as it gives myco the tools to deliver at scale. Huawei’s AI driven content generation and low latency streaming allow myco to fulfil their promise of participation and ownership.

Rising to the challenge

Huawei Cloud MetaStudio is built on robust infrastructure and has been designed as a one-stop content generation platform for companies like myco. It also has advanced AI features that can help content creators produce new video output more quickly. For example, Huawei Cloud Virtual Human allows these creators to introduce elements of automation into their process that eliminate the need to reshoot elements, edit, or even use human actors.

Additionally, avatars only need training once, and with instant text-to-video conversion, content creation becomes highly efficient and cost-effective.

Once the content has been produced, it can be distributed easily and at scale to a global audience – with built-in translation capabilities for over 20 languages, it can be a truly global platform.

Huawei Cloud Media Live, the content delivery platform powered by Huawei Cloud availability zones (AZs) across the world, helps ensure a seamless experience for myco viewers. For example, myco recently used the platform, which boasts a freeze rate of less than 0.5% and a first frame delay of under 1.5 seconds, to stream a sports event for which it had exclusive broadcast rights in the MENA region. It was able to handle over 250 Gbps of peak traffic without a hitch, delivering an excellent experience for the audience.

“This partnership with Huawei has helped us transition from a reactive, expensive, and inefficient operational model to an intelligent, data-driven ecosystem,” says Jaser. “It’s no longer about just hosting content, it’s about understanding behaviour, predicting demand, and optimizing every second of the viewing journey.”

Facing the future of media

The pace of change in media continues to accelerate, with change happening faster now than ever. The traditional ad supported attention economy is faltering: banner blindness is now instinctive, ad fatigue is rampant and engagement is tanking. Attention can’t be bought – it must be earned by sharing power with the audience.

“The next decade will be defined by interactive experiences, decentralised ownership, and AI-powered creativity,” says Jaser. “We’re moving toward a world where the line between streaming, gaming, and social media completely disappears. This isn’t a pipe dream – it’s the inevitable evolution of entertainment. Read only media (Web 1.0) gave way to read write platforms (Web 2.0). Now we’re entering the era of read own – where audiences are stakeholders in the entertainment and attention economy.”

Jaser says he and the team at myco see themselves as “a catalyst for this shift”, adding that the partnership between his company and Huawei Cloud is a strategic one as much as it is technical and cultural.

“Our shared vision is to position the MENA region as a creative technological hub for the next generation of digital entertainment – one that’s viewer-owned, creator-driven and intelligent,” Jaser adds. Together with Huawei, they are building local talent pipelines, supporting Arabic content and ensuring the region’s creative voices reach global audiences.

Huawei Cloud and myco are unlocking a new experience for both creators and consumers of content. The costs involved in making new videos and the time to release have been trimmed to previously unthinkable levels, while interactivity is also hitting new highs.

As the media landscape evolves toward decentralised ownership and participatory entertainment, learn how to watch, earn and own your entertainment at myco.io. For more information on how Huawei Cloud can power your business, visit https://www.huaweicloud.com