Difference between revisions of "Twitch.tv"

Revision as of 00:09, 27 April 2016

www.Twitch.tv

Community	Gamers, Craftsmen, Musicians, Entertainment
Membership	Free
Privacy	features that support privacy
Self Identity	Video Streaming Site
Features	Live Streaming, Music, Video ondemand
Status
Launch Date	June 6, 2011
Users	45 million+

Twitch.tv is a platform used for live video streaming focusing mainly on video games. Streamers, the user's creating and preforming the live video content, broadcast everything from video game play-throughs to talk shows to live tournament events. Since it was founded in 2011, Twitch has seen steady increases in numbers of new visitors and streamers, and in 2015, Twitch announced it was hosting over 1.5 million broadcasters and 100 million visitors each month.

History

Twitch.tv was founded in 2011; however, its roots go back to Justin.tv, formed in 2007 by Justin Kan and Emmett Shear. Originally, their concept of the website centered around Justin Kan wearing a hat with a video camera and microphone attached and going about broadcasting his everyday activities or as the termed was coined, a "Lifecast". Later, they divided the site into different categories with gaming becoming the most popular by far. With the unprecedented success of the gaming section on Justin.tv, the company decided to devote an entirely new website to this category naming it Twitch.tv, after the term "twitch gameplay", which refers a gamer's ultra quick reaction times to certain in-game scenarios. Ever since, Twitch.tv has completely dominated the video game streaming and live video entertainment market.

Users, Audience, & Content

The average users on Twitch are predominately male and in between the ages of 18 and 34, and focus most of their attention to the video game viewing aspect of the site. However, the number of females starting to stream as greatly risen. While some female streamers notoriously tend to play on their sexuality and attractiveness to gain large viewer numbers, most female streamers are very serious gamers and evidence that females are very close to making a big splash into the esports arena.

For the most part, content on Twitch consists mostly of video game play throughs and live video game tournaments; however, recently there has been an increase in the amount of creative content. For example, pianoimproman is a Twitch streamer that plays piano songs that viewers request as well as some of his originals. He averages almost 17k views each time he goes live, and is evidence of the surge of creative content on Twitch. Another area Twitch has started to break into is the live music streaming market. In 2015, Twitch created a new category for music. Within this category, viewers can find radio talk shows, coverage of live music festivals, as well as other musical productions broadcasts.

The Mechanics of Twitch

Twitch's homepage displays various games and streamers ranked by viewership. The homepage also now features a streamer chosen by Twitch for the day. Viewers can easily browse or search specifically for a streamer by game or by name.

The mechanics of Twitch from a viewers standpoint are plentiful and is partly why streaming as been such a successful venture. First, viewers can chat live with the streamers they are watching and many times good streamers will interact personally with their audience rather than just go ahead play the game and ignore them. Second, viewers can donate money directly to the streamers. Within this donation they can write a message that will appear live on screen for the whole chat and streamer to see. Along with donating, viewers can subscribe to the streamer's channel. Depending on how the streamer has organized his channel, subscribing can mean special benefits such as chat special chat emojis created by the streamer, subscriber chat only mode, and full video on demand access to past streams.

Career Streamers

While it is very unlikely that someone can become wealthy off streaming 24/7, making a career out of live streaming has become more possible in recent years. A Streamers career path requires a few things. First, it is important that a streamer achieves a partnership with Twitch. To do this the streamer must maintain a steady viewership over 500+ each time they turn on their live stream. To put this into perspective, only about 150 channels have more than 500 concurrent viewers and of these channels most aren't normal streamers. They're either live broadcasts of tournaments. Second, streamers must obtain a solid number of subscribers.

Popular Games

There are many games that are popularly streamed on Twitch.tv, one of which being Electronic Arts's FIFA 16. Users can livestream gameplay, allowing for games to be watched remotely by whomever decided to tune in.

Ethical Implications

Any sort of live entertainment carries ethical implications along with it.

References

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External links

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