Twitch.tv

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. Twitch.tv is owned by Amazon. 'Streamers, the user's creating and performing 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. Although everything on Twitch is live, some streamers have shown or encouraged illegal activity. Also, there are rules against harassment of other individuals on Twitch, "Harassment, defamation, intimidation, raiding with malicious intent, or stalking of other persons or users, including Twitch Staff, Admins, or Global Moderators, is strictly prohibited" . Even though there are moderators within Twitch many unethical things still go unnoticed.

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. There are also categories such as social eating, and IRL.

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 has 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.

Twitch Payment Structure

Streamers are eligible to earn increased benefits and income sources as they grow through Twitch's Affiliate and Partner Programs. Before qualifying for these programs, any user can stream on the platform without generating revenue. The addition of streaming capability directly from the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One has allowed many streamers to jump-start their career with little capital investment. However, until streamers enter these programs, third party donations and sponsorships are the only potential income sources, but are unlikely to be earned by a small-time creator. As streamers grow their audience, they become eligible to apply for the Affiliate and Partner programs. As of 2018, Twitch reported that there were around 150,000 affiliates and 27,000 partners . These numbers have likely increased since their announcement, as there were 17,000 partners in 2017.

Twitch Affiliate Program

Requirements

The Affiliate program has simple and concrete requirements for eligibility over a 30 day period .

• Reach 50 followers
• Average 3 viewers on streams
• Stream on 7 unique days
• Stream a total of 8 hours

Once these conditions are met, streamers can apply for affiliate status.

Benefits

Becoming an affiliate opens doors to both revenue sources from Twitch and increased channel customization.

Revenue

The most important benefit is the ability to receive previously mentioned subscriptions. As an Affiliate, a content creator is eligible to receive subscriptions of $4.99, $14.99, and $24.99 per month. Creators receive half of the money generated from their subscriptions, with the other half going to Twitch . Additionally, Affiliates can be gifted bits, with 1 bit equaling $0.01. Bits can be earned by viewers by watching advertisements, who can then gift them to streamers. A final revenue source for affiliates is the ability to earn money through game sales that are generated through links on their channel.

Channel Customization

Affiliates are granted access to up to 5 customizable emotes that can be used by their subscribers in any chatroom. They can also re-air past broadcasts and host events for pre-made video debuts.

Twitch Partner Program

Requirements

The Partner Program requirements are much more subjective and reaching the concrete benchmarks don't always correlate to acceptance into the program . Partners receive all benefits that Affiliates do, with additional special treatment. The base cutoffs to apply to the program are also based on achievements over a 30 day period.

• Average 75 viewers
• Stream 25 total hours
• Stream 12 unique days

Benefits

The Partner program focuses less on additional monetary incentives and more on channel customization.

Revenue

The only additional source of income that Partners have over Affiliates is directly earning money from ads played on their stream.

Channel Customization

Where partners benefit the most is in their channel customization. They are eligible for the following:

• Custom subscription badges that allow subscribers to show how long they have been subscribed to the channel for.
• 50 custom subscriber emotes that can be used by viewers across the platform
• Custom badges for people that change based on how many bits they've given to a streamer
• Saves Videos On Demand for 60 days, where all other users' videos are saved for 14 days
• A verified user badge that appears next to their name
• Free lifetime subscription for their chatbot, which uses commands to help answer FAQs
• Up to 3 free lifetime subscriptions to their channel for family and friends
• Priority support from twitch staff
• Can create their own stream team
• Can use a broadcast delay
• Get the top priority for video quality over affiliates
• Get top priority for support from Twitch

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. One way to do is by making a partnership with Twitch. Requirements to do so are to have a growing audience, although this can vary as there isn't a set number. The streamer must broadcast three times a week on a consistent basis. And they must follow all rules of conduct, DMCA guidelines, and Terms of Service. Some of the most famous career streamers can range from thousands of viewers to tens of thousands in some instances. Ninja, holds the record for most concurrent viewers reaching 628,000 when playing Fortnite with the rapper Drake.

Popular Streamers

Tyler Blevins (Ninja)

Popular streamer Richard Tyler Blevins (Ninja) has shown how lucrative a streaming career can be. In March of 2018, Ninja broke Twitch.Tv's concurrent viewer record at over 600,000 playing the game Fortnite. Ninja reported that he makes over $500,000 a month . Ninja reached this viewer count by playing with popular music artist Drake. Ninja streams 5 days a week.

Guy Beahm (Dr DisRespect)

Guy Beahm (known as Dr DisRespect) is a streamer and personality on Twitch.tv. He has gained over 2 million followers on his channel. During his stream Guy Beahm takes on an alter ego, wearing a wig and sunglasses. He advertises his subscriber group as "The Champions Club". Dr DisRespect has previously broken Twitch.tv's concurent viewer record at 388,000 viewers.

Popular Games

There are many games that are popularly streamed on Twitch.tv, one of which being Electronic Arts's FIFA 16. Users can live stream gameplay, allowing for games to be watched remotely by whoever decided to tune in. In addition, many computer games like League of Legends have many popular YouTubers that also host live streams through Twitch.tv.

Fortnite is a popular game that is streamed on Twitch.tv. On March 15th, 2018, Drake and professional video game player Tyler "Ninja" Blevins made history when they live streamed Fortnite and broke the record for the most streamed session of all time on Twitch.tv. They were joined by JuJu Smith-Schuster and rapper Travis Scott where they were watched by 628,000 people at once. Their game session was trending on Twitter. Twitch's SVP of marketing, Kate Jhaveriof, released a press statement the next day stating her satisfaction of Twitch's new record and reach into popular culture.

Ethical Implications

Harassment

In every single stream, there is a comments section for users. Most streams allow users to consistently talk and say whatever they want, but there are some banned words that you can customize yourself. According to Twitch.tv, this capability would protect their personal information, protect against spambots, and Reduce toxicity in chat in conjunction with other common settings, chat bots and chat rules. In addition, popular streamers will often have moderators who will be in the chat and they have the ability give users timeouts, ban, unban, slow, slowoff, subscribers, subscribersoff, clear, R9KBeta, and R9KBetaOff. Even though there are moderators with this much power in the chat some people can still get away with saying targeted insults to other users.

Discrimination

Due to the fact that Twitch subscribers have the benefit of using stickers and customized icons, there is discrimination within the Twitch platform against those that are unable to afford the subscription. In fact, streamers have the ability to change the chat box setting in such a way that only allows their subscribers to type in chat. This creates a situation that is unfair towards non-subscribers and is an ethic concern yet to be resolved.

External links

coming soon