Twitch is a live video game streaming site founded in June 2011. It currently has more than 55 million active users and in the last year alone it had total views of over 10.5 billion. Its increasing popularity sparked the interest of Amazon who bought the platform for $970 million last year.
Twitch can be considered an online social network as it meets Boyd and Ellison’s 3 criteria to define a social network: “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.” (Boyd and Ellison, 2007)
Twitch allows anyone with an account to broadcast, chat, follow and subscribe to a channel, view past recordings and privately message other users. Users can set up a profile with a picture and general information about themselves and their channel such as age, location, favourtie games, hobbies etc. Broadcasters include individual gamers, pro players, publishers, developers, media outlets, conventions and esports organizations. You have the option to ‘follow’ other channels and be notified when they are live.
Twitch is notable for its very active community with the average user spending 106 minutes per day on twitch. Over 58% of users spend 20 hours a week on twitch. Almost half of the US live video streaming traffic in 2014 came from Twitch. Twitch also accounts for 1.8% of peak internet traffic in the US, close to Netflix, Apple and Google.
The popularity of this platform is revolutionizing the gaming industry and creating a unique community which can interact with each other 24/7 regardless of location. It is reported that 68% of users have decreased watching television as a result of twitch. Twitch’s main demography includes young adults, with a reported 76% of users between the age of 18-49.
Twitch can also be considered a viable profession for broadcasters that can attract a large audience. In fact Jeffrey Shih, a popular Twitch broadcaster, stated that the best broadcasters can earn over $100 thousand a year from their channel revenue alone.
With all these impressive statistics it is no surprise Amazon was so eager to secure this platform ahead of Yahoo which was also bidding to acquire Twitch. The concept of video streaming combined with an active online social network is what allowed Twitch to be successful. It will be interesting to see if other firms will try and recreate this in other industries such as sports or education. I believe there is huge potential for video streaming outside of the gaming industry. More and more people prefer watching content on the internet rather than television, and having a community to interact with at the same time is a significant advantage. If you are interested in this topic I encourage you to take a look at the links below.
-Boyd, D.M., and Ellison, N.B. 2007,’Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(1) 210–230.
-Eadicicco, L., 2014, ’10 Facts About Twitch, The Company That Amazon Is Buying, That Will Blow Your Mind’, Business Insider, Viewed October 5th at <http://www.businessinsider.com/statistics-about-twitch-2014-8?IR=T>
-Kim, E., 2014, ‘Amazon Buys Twitch For $970 Million In Cash’, Business Insider, Viewed October 5th at <http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-buys-twitch-2014-8?IR=T>
-https://www.quantcast.com/twitch.tv#/trafficCard
