Hopin announced that it has acquired video platform StreamYard. Hopin describes itself as “the first all-in-one event platform optimized for connecting”. StreamYard is “a live streaming studio in your browser” where you can interview guests, share your screen, and simulcast to platforms like Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Hopin has a blog post on their website about the acquisition:

This acquisition combines the beautiful video production quality of StreamYard with the full end-to-end live events experience of Hopin. The result? Hopin organizers are able to create events that dazzle their attendees—across every aspect of the experience.

Together, we aim to provide a seamless, high-quality customer experience that makes people, not places, the heart of events.

Going forward, both StreamYard and Hopin users will continue to be able to use the services they know and love as they always have — no abrupt or sudden changes will happen. Only once we begin learning the best way to make the customer experience better will we begin to create a roadmap to bring both product experiences closer together. We look forward to listening and learning together with our communities.

Finally, this is a win for our industry as well. As one company, Hopin+StreamYard will deliver an unrivaled value proposition in the global events market and will help us achieve the ambitious growth goals we aim to achieve in 2021 and beyond.

To me, it sounds like this acquisition could be a good thing for new podcasters who don’t want to purchase equipment or software that can be very useful for recording and editing an episode. Those who want to do roundtable events, with many guests, can use Hopin + StreamYard to do it. It could be an interesting – and much simpler – alternative to Twitch.

TechCrunch reported that the deal is with $250 million, paid in a mix of cash and stock. StreamYard will retain its brand and in-market product so that it can integrate StreamYard’s streaming tech into Hopin’s marquee product. StreamYard will become the default Hopin streaming option.