The pandemic was a huge catalyst for the explosion of gaming and live streaming in mainstream culture. Stuck in their homes, people developed these new hobbies and flocked to sites like Twitch to watch others play or do it themselves.
At the start of last year, the Amazon-owned company soared 82 percent to 1.8 billion in terms of hours watched. Its popularity continues to grow, with major sports companies and politicians using the platform as a way to spread their content or ideas.
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What is Twitch?
Twitch is essentially a streaming platform where people can stream each other live. playing video games, cooking or doing just about anything that can be filmed by a camera.
The concept behind Twitch came from Justin Kan and Emmett Shear, who in 2007 launched a website called Justin.tv, allowing people to stream themselves and chat with live audiences. Thanks to a huge gaming-based crowd, it was rebranded as Twitch Interactive in 2014, with Amazon acquiring the company for $970 million.
Despite being gaming-centric, over the years Twitch has evolved into other categories where you can see people vlog live, cooking, creating art, gambling, making music, singing and much more, making the platform one of the most popular forms of entertainment online.
The 'Just Chatting' section especially gets the most traffic, although in most cases it's just the streamer sitting casually and chatting with their viewers.
Sports organizations also use the platform to host tournaments, while others conduct live interviews with sports players (NBA), or even make sponsorship deals with specific streamers to grow their base users.
For example, mobile payment service Cash App partnered with some streamers last year to hand out thousands of dollars to random viewers in chat.
Subscriptions
If you like a streamer's content, you can support them by donating some money, subscribing to their channel for a small monthly fee, or donating bits, which is a platform currency.
Previously, these subscriptions cost $5, but in the middle of last year, Twitch introduced regional pricing, bringing the cost down.
Subscriptions also come with perks like ad-free viewing, a cool badge next to your name, and unique emotes that can be used across the entire platform. You can also gift a specific viewer or distribute them randomly, in custom quantities, to a community.
In addition, they are available in three levels, where the last two grant more emotes and a highlight emblem, and are made for those who want to give a streamer more money. Streamers also make money through sponsorships, sports tournaments, affiliate links and advertisements – which many of the best streamers avoid running.
channel points
Watching a broadcast for extended periods of time also benefits the viewer as it accumulates channel points over time. These points can be used to claim rewards such as unlocking emoticons, playing specific sounds, messages, send highlighted messages or any type of bet that the streamer decide.
Following someone grants 300 points, while visiting their channel every day gives you follow points. 'Watch Stream' bonus, ranging from +300 to +450 points, depending on how long you keeps. The more points you collect, the better rewards you can redeem.