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.
Viewers
The majority of Twitch users are passive viewers, stopping by streamers’ channels only to watch. Some viewers interact with the streamers by typing into the stream chat, where the streamer can view all of the messages being sent in their channel chat and sometimes reciprocate the viewer interaction. Other viewers might also be streamers, or moderators.
Streamers
Less than 5% of the Twitch userbase stream. (Needs verification). Most of the time, Twitch streamers’ main goal is to make some sort of money off of streaming, whether it be from ad revenue if their channel becomes popular enough, or subscriptions and donations from their viewers/fans. In all cases, a large amount of viewers on a particular channel makes it substantially easier for the streamer to be able to make money.
Community
58% of Twitch users spend “more than 20 hours a week watching videos on its site”.[3] The majority of Twitch’s userbase is male (needs verification).
Health Issues
At times, streamers can spend too much time at their computer streaming, not giving enough attention to themselves for breaks. This can pose both physical and mental health problems for the streamers, some of them citing feeling depressed, anxious, or deprived of sleep because of the desire to keep fans engaged on their channel.[4] In some rare cases, streamers can die, sometimes from stream-related issues. On February 19th, 2017, Brian “Poshybrid” Vigneault died from unknown reasons after streaming for 22 hours straight in order to raise money for Make-A-Wish Foundation.[5] In another case, Twitch streamer “Applejacked” seemed to have a mental breakdown on stream after staying awake for 50+ hours before having his stream get shut down by Twitch.[6]- ↑ Wall Street Journal Needleman, S.E. (2015). “Twitch's Viewers Reach 100 Million a Month”
- ↑ Business Insider Kim, E. (2014). “Amazon Buys Twitch For $970 Million In Cash”
- ↑ Business Insider Eadicicco, L. (2014). “10 Facts About Twitch, The Company That Amazon Is Buying, That Will Blow Your Mind”
- ↑ Kotaku D'Anastasio, C. (2017). “For Twitch Streamers Who Spend Their Lives on Camera, It's Hard To Know When To Stop”
- ↑ Kotaku Grayson, N. (2017). “Twitch Streamer Dies During 24-Hour Marathon Stream”
- ↑ Reddit Reddit. (2016). “Streamer applejacked has been awake for 50+ hours and clearly something is horribly wrong”
