A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for any online video platform to compete with YouTube’s performance, market penetration or simply its ubiquity with the general public. Fast forward to 2016 and the gaming-centric streaming site Twitch is telling YouTube to eat its dust.
Twitch released a 2015 retrospective that featured several stunning data points. The most important may be that Amazon-owned Twitch’s users watch approximately 421.6 minutes of programming monthly, compared to YouTube’s per-user figure of 291 minutes. Though Twitch did not announce any new information on its total user base, which was last clocked at over 100 million members, it did say that it averages about 550,000 concurrent viewers.
There are a number of reasons why Twitch is able to nearly double up the far more well-known YouTube. With a niche, though quite large, fan base, video game broadcasters can put out a regular stream of their content as they please, and unlike many YouTube videos that require time-intensive filming and editing that can chew up weeks, Twitch streamers simply record themselves playing their games of choice. In some cases, this content goes live immediately. Add on top of that the periodic eSports events that are shown in real time on Twitch, and there’s plenty of content for an engaged consumer base to get excited about.
However, TechCrunch explained that Twitch has found an inexplicable amount of success fostering fan interaction on its site through emoji commerce. If users enjoy a particular broadcaster, they can purchase a pack of emojis specific to his or her character or personality. Given how emojis are used as often as plain text in Twitch’s frenetic chatrooms, monetizing a quirky facet of nerd culture makes money for Twitch and keeps its users engaged.
And now that Twitch’s parent, Amazon, has released an entire game engine for free, don’t expect that level of enthusiasm to drop anytime soon.
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