TWITCH.TV

Welcome back to Let’s Blog! My post this month is about one of the most famous streaming platforms, Twitch.tv.

It is an American video live streaming service operated by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon. The site focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of e-Sports competitions, in addition to music broadcasts, creative content, and more recently, "in real life" streams. 

When Justin.tv (first name of twitch) was launched in 2007 by Justin Kan and Emmett Shear, the site was divided into several content categories. The gaming one, grew quickly, and became the most popular content on the site. In June 2011, the company decided to spin off the gaming content as TwitchTV, inspired by the term twitch gameplay. The platform became the most popular e-sports streaming service, competing also with video services, such as YouTube and Dailymotion, which began to increase the prominence of their gaming content to compete, but have had a much smaller impact so far. On February 2014, Twitch was the fourth largest source of Internet traffic during peak times in the United States, behind Netflix, Google, and Apple.

On May 18, 2014, Variety, reported that Google had reached a preliminary deal to acquire Twitch through its YouTube subsidiary for approximately US$1 billion, but the affair failed, so, on August 25, 2014, Amazon acquired Twitch Interactive for US$970 million.

 

Twitch was known as a great streaming platform to see every kind of e-sports, but in December 2017, the National Basketball Association announced that it would stream NBA G League games on Twitch. In April 2018, it was announced that Twitch would carry eleven National Football League Thursday Night Football games, as part of the league's renewed streaming deal with Amazon Prime Video. On September 5, 2019, the National Women's Hockey League announced, and wrestling too, found his place on the platform.

Broadcasters on Twitch often host streams promoting and raising money for different charity’s organization. By 2013, the website had hosted events, which, in total, raised over US$8 million in donations for charitable causes, as Extra life, in 2017 with Zevent and in 2020 with Amnesty.

Most watched Twitch videos of all Time

                                                                              Francesco P., 4sc