What is Twitch?
Twitch is a popular website, mostly dedicated to all things gaming, that provides an online service for watching and streaming digital video broadcasts. The content can be viewed live or on-demand.
It launched June 2011 as a spin-off of the old Justin TV platform, identifying as "the largest competitive video gaming broadcast network in the world".
On top of product announcements and events, the platform allows you to watch hundreds of broadcasters live stream in real time, plus the ability to read and send instant messages to other users, including the broadcasters.
It also allows you to follow your favorite broadcasters for free, subscribe to them for a fee or even start broadcasting yourself and maybe even get paid for doing so.
Having more traffic than either Facebook or Amazon, its popularity solidified in 2013 when it hit an average of 43 million views per month and, by 2014, it was already considered the 4th major traffic peak of the US.
On the same year, Google expressed their interest in acquiring Twitch, but it was eventually both by Amazon instead, thus continuing to be YouTube's rival to this day, as well as one of the highest sources of internet traffic in North America.
When it first aired, its main focus was almost exclusively the streaming of video games (including playthroughs), as well as broadcasts of several e-sports competitions.
It has since expanded to also include streams of, artwork creation, music, talk shows, and the occasional TV series thus providing more variety to their viewers. There is even an IRL category, which allows broadcasters to simply hang out and chat with their viewers.
Twitch boasts an average of over 2 million unique streamers every month.
It launched June 2011 as a spin-off of the old Justin TV platform, identifying as "the largest competitive video gaming broadcast network in the world".
"Every major event, publisher, developer, and media outlet in the gaming industry had a presence on Twitch, and streaming became an ever-present piece of the gaming experience. And it’s only going to get bigger." - Matthew DiPietro (Twitch's marketing vice president, 2014)
On top of product announcements and events, the platform allows you to watch hundreds of broadcasters live stream in real time, plus the ability to read and send instant messages to other users, including the broadcasters.
It also allows you to follow your favorite broadcasters for free, subscribe to them for a fee or even start broadcasting yourself and maybe even get paid for doing so.
Having more traffic than either Facebook or Amazon, its popularity solidified in 2013 when it hit an average of 43 million views per month and, by 2014, it was already considered the 4th major traffic peak of the US.
On the same year, Google expressed their interest in acquiring Twitch, but it was eventually both by Amazon instead, thus continuing to be YouTube's rival to this day, as well as one of the highest sources of internet traffic in North America.
"When video game historians look back on gaming a decade from now, 2013 will be the year they cite as the tipping point of streaming." - Matthew DiPietro (Twitch's marketing vice president, 2014)
When it first aired, its main focus was almost exclusively the streaming of video games (including playthroughs), as well as broadcasts of several e-sports competitions.
It has since expanded to also include streams of, artwork creation, music, talk shows, and the occasional TV series thus providing more variety to their viewers. There is even an IRL category, which allows broadcasters to simply hang out and chat with their viewers.
Twitch boasts an average of over 2 million unique streamers every month.
What about you? Were you already familiar with Twitch? Is there a different live streaming platform you prefer? Let me know in the comments below.
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