Blog #4 - Key Post - Twitch

Twitch.TV

History of Twitch

Twitch originally started in 2007 as Justin.TV. The site was created by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt. It was a site to live broadcast, similarly to Twitch. Each user's profile was referred to as a "channel," similar to both Twitch and Youtube. 

The first user, of course, was Justin, who broadcasted his life. The broadcasting style was known as "lifecasting" or "lifestreaming." Similar to a vlog (video blog), it focused on the mundane aspects of everyday life, but it was unedited, and people would watch his life as it happened. 

In October of 2007, he opened the site for anyone to live stream. This made the site way more popular, acquiring over 1 million registered users. They also added the live chat along with the stream, which was a very abstract concept at the time. 

There were many categories of streams, but the most popular kind was gaming, and in 2011, they made a spin-off site called "Twitch.TV." Twitch got very popular, and by the beginning of 2014, it became the 4th biggest source of internet traffic. Justin.TV was shut down in late 2014, and Twitch became the main site. Amazon purchased it for 970 million dollars, and since then, has been purchasing other companies and growing its enterprise.

Impact of Twitch

People want to see livestreaming. Approximately 82% of people enjoy livestreams over normal social media posts. People also tend to be more engaged with livestreams, watching them 10-20 minutes longer than normal videos that are on demand. It gives a more personal relationship between streamer and viewer with the live chat and the ability to donate money to your favorite streamers and to subscribe to them.

With Covid-19, the amount of livestreaming has gone up by a lot, not only with gaming and people watching gamers when they are in quarantine, but also with different services in everyday life. Churches typically livestreamed their services when they weren't allowed to meet, Business venues were usually streamed online, President Joe Biden's presidential rallies were even mostly streamed online. Some music venues were also online. 

With some people unable to always go to these events, and the money spent on livestreaming equipment, I think livestreaming will stay prevalent in a post-covid world. There are a lot of people who don't have cars, or who are too old to drive, or who got sick the day of an event. This is also a world where ease of access and convenience and equal opportunities are important.

If a student gets cancer and they are stuck in the hospital, they can still take a class remote to the best of their ability, and potentially not fall a year behind in school. If an old person has no spouce and their family is far away and they can't drive, they can watch church remotely or watch their grandkid's wedding remotely. 

If someone's graduation is very far from reletaves and they can't afford the plane ticket down to watch it, they can watch it virtually.If I feel lonely, I can hop onto Corpse, CallMeKevin, or Lilypichu's streams and feel like I'm just hanging out with them. I've even seen house representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stream before.