Twitch
Twitch is an online stream-viewing platform that congregates viewers and streamers and focuses on video game streaming. It started in June 2011 as an alternative version of Justin.tv, another similar online streaming platform, focusing particularly on streaming video games. Twitch was recently acquired by Amazon, and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
History
Twitch started in June 2011 as a streaming website featuring video games. Its popularity has spiked in the recent years, reaching 100 million viewers a month in 2015.[1] In August of 2014, Amazon stated it would buy Twitch for $970 million.[2] Since then, Twitch Prime has been introduced as a premium Twitch membership option, giving users the option to link their Amazon account with their Twitch account for bonuses such as video game loot.
Features
Twitch’s site content is divided up into different sections--on the home page, there is a large carousel featuring various streamers, and a listing of games sorted by popularity (current number of viewers for that game) that you can watch on Twitch below the carousel featuring streamers. On each streamer’s channel, there is the option to “follow” that streamer, which notifies the user when that streamer begins to stream. In addition, users can choose to donate or “subscribe” to their favorite streamers. Subscriptions, which are $5/month per channel, provide added benefits for viewers of the channels they’re subscribed to.
