What is Twitch and How it Became Popular?

Twitch is an online live video platform that young people ​​have been consuming in recent years. For them, it is their television.

A person places a camera in front of his computer and starts the live broadcast and from his chair. While playing a video game, he talks directly with his audience about any topic that may occur.

Initially, Twitch was only used by video gamers. But in recent months, the platform has gain popularity rapidly and has been filled with content creators with all kinds of channels: influencers, cooks, travellers, journalists or artists.

According to data from the platform, every day, Twitch receives an average of 26,5 million visitors.

The most popular content creators earn millions in advertising, sponsorship and donations.

What is really behind the success of this platform and its millionaire audiences? Is it the future of television?

Twitch has come at the right time

According to experts, the great Twitch boom occurred when Amazon bought it for $970 million in 2014. t was already a consolidated platform, but with the rise of video games like Fortnite, Twitch definitely took off.

For some, it may seem strange people being entertained by watching others play video games. However, according to the American sociologist and a specialist in online gamer culture, TL Taylor, stated that watching others play has been tried to carry out since the 80s. These days, there has been a lot of progress in improving internet infrastructures and devices such as cameras, headphones and microphones. Twitch appeared at the right time. The expansion of gamer culture and technological improvements have been great for it.

It was not only Amazon that boosted the platform’s popularity. The coronavirus pandemic has been a significant factor for a shift to Twitch. During the confinement, it has quickly become a serious alternative to youtube.

In the second quarter of 2020, with many national lockdowns worldwide, Twitch experienced a 56% growth in total hours consumed.

Experts think a lot of the key to Twitch’s success is that it perfectly combines the enjoyment of viewing content with a strong sense of community. However, they believe that it is a mistake to pose Twitch’s phenomenon as theft of television audiences. We consume different types of media. There is so much supply that it is challenging to have a regulated consumption of different kinds of entertainment mediums. Simultaneously, television is indeed ageing, and for particular cases, it cannot be renewed.