Let’s check the key milestones of Twitch history – the leading platform of video game streaming in the world with millions of viewers and streamers.
Today online streaming is a quite popular Internet activity and sometimes it resembles of a reality show. A lot of video bloggers seek to express their opinion on a particular issue, and the audience is watching videos in real time.
But the most popular is streaming of video games. The leading platform in this sphere is www.twitch.tv, with audience – about 150 million visits per month, and more than 3 million streamers. Let’s get back to the early days of the platform and find out how Twitch gained its leading positions.
HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH TWITCH: MONITARIZATION BASICS
The birth of online streaming
The history of justin.tv
Back in 2007, four friends decided to bring to life an idea that had no analogues at that time.
Justin Kahn, one of the masterminds of the team, decided to provide the Internet audience with the opportunity to observe his life 24 hours a day.
For nine months, a camera was attached to his head, and users of the site justin.tv could watch him walking, chatting, eating, and even sleeping. An exception was made during sleep, since the camera was directed at Justin himself (while visiting toilet, Kan raised the lens up).
Justin believed that the idea of streaming would completely change the way people view video on the Internet, and would kickstart a new trend.
While Kahn and Emmett were online streaming of Justin’s life, their friends, Shire and Vogt were looking for the evolution of the project, and people from all over the world began to contact them with a request for the possibility of broadcasting their own videos.
This is how the functionality was created that allowed you to stream online from your home webcam and monitor. The web-site began to acquire a mass of content, and Justin Kahn decided to turn off his camera.
The justin.tv website was very clearly structured, and people could choose special area. It was news, sports, even channels about animals, but the video game streaming channel received the most popularity and the number of views.
It was then, in 2011, that the first version of Twitch was launched. In fact, it remained the same justin.tv, but was packed in a new wrapper.
Just a few months later, the developers realized that the Twitch audience is larger than the streamers from justin.tv, and the creators decided to open a new portal – twitch.tv.
When Playtime Goes Too Far: Games Twitch Won’t Allow
Twitch history
As mentioned above, in 2011 the site twitch.tv was launched. The gamers could play games in live mode.
Of course, even such a large network as Youtube had built an online streaming service, but the main feature of Twitch was that it is focused on video games.
2012 was another step towards the popularity of the portal. So, according to the data of the end of 2012, the permanent audience of streams was more than 20 million people who watched about 600,000 streams every month.
But the main feature was that Twitch became the official portal that could broadcast WORLD CYBER GAMES 2012.
This move immediately attracted investors and advertisers, and a number of companies invested about $ 15 million to develop the channel.
New features
During the work of the twitch.tv channel, the developers constantly introduced some innovations and additions, and so it became possible to use the chat directly while streaming. By the way, on popular channels, users spend even more time chatting than watching a stream.
A little later, Twitch was able to integrate directly video games, and now any user could start broadcasting from their channel with just one button press.
But the main feature of Twitch was the lack of corporate censorship. The only prohibition was the broadcasting of porn videos and videos that are not related to the game theme.
VIDEO GAME STREAMING EQUIPMENT CHECKLIST: MUST HAVE FOR BEGINNER
Twitch history: new challanges
In June 2013, the Twitch Media Group was created, which united all the previously existing projects of the team.
The portal became the official channel of such large projects that were carried out within the framework of the world eSports championships: Dota 2, League of Legends, Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm.
Most game developers realized that it would be much more profitable to stream gameplay videos of games that have not yet been released, to attract attention of the gamers all over the world will.
For example, Microsoft demonstrated the gameplay of the game World of Tanks, which at that time was not yet released on the XBox 360.
Latest trends and Amazon deal
2014 was a year of change for the Twitch History, and the company’s management decided to rename Justin.tv to Twitch Interactive. The fact is that Twitch’s audience has grown 15 times larger than justin.tv, and the decision was quite reasonable.
How to stream ps4 game to youtube?
10 million visits per week became the norm for the channel, and on twitch.tv it became possible to find online gameplay for any game ever existing.
It was rumored that Google had decided to buy out Twitch with an offer of $ 1 billion, but later it was revealed that Amazon had bought the video streaming service Twitch for $ 970 million. So Amazon is now the owner.
Surely, still big changes await the service, but they will be aimed only at the best, and the project will attract many more users to the screens of their monitors.
