Covid-19 forced us to stay at home and as leisure and entertainment options were reduced, we had to look for things that would make us enjoy our free time at home.
This is where numerous platforms have experienced an explosion of popularity within their own revolution independent of the pandemic, experienced by the digital era in which we find ourselves.
Within these platforms, one of the main entertainment media that has had the most growth is streaming media or live broadcasts.
Faced with a high demand for audiovisual content, this “novel” model has been able to provide a new approach, whether through series, films, video games, podcasts, etc.
Increasingly widespread in society, and endangering the consumption and importance of traditional media such as TV, the truth is that this model is here to stay and will represent a great opportunity for the marketing strategy of many companies.
The Twitch phenomenon
Within this trend that revolves around streaming , the biggest protagonist has been Twitch.
Created in 2011, Twitch was born 10 years ago, long before this “boom” that we have mentioned as a platform where you can broadcast video game-related content live, which has evolved over time.
Amazon, a company that has accustomed us to betting self employed phone number list on companies with a future, did it again in 2014 with Twitch, which was acquired for 970 million dollars.
It was not the only one interested. Other large companies such as Google were also following Twitch closely and would possibly have beaten Amazon to the punch if it had not already owned YouTube and could have breached the “Antritrust Law” or competition law, which seeks to prevent companies from creating monopolies or large positions of power, in favour of allowing greater competition in the market from which consumers benefit.
However, how exactly does Twitch work?
What is Twitch and how does it work ?
First of all, we could say that Twitch acts as a library of channels where audiovisual content is published, very similar to the YouTube format. The difference with YouTube is that the content, instead of being videos published periodically, on Twitch it focuses on live broadcasts .
There are two types of users:
Viewers , common users who watch broadcasts,
“ Streamers ,” content creators through their own channels.
The use of the platform by both users is completely free, although there are forms of micropayments to access various advantages.
One of the main aspects to clarify is the fact that Twitch was born as a platform for live broadcasts of video game-related content. That is, on it, you could initially only see streamers playing video games or e-sports competitions.
That is not the reality today, and the content has diversified to the point that you can actually broadcast practically anything; from cooking shows, art, ASMR, debates, obviously including video games, and even channels where the streamer is dedicated solely to chatting with his audience. The possibilities are endless.
To make it easier to navigate through channels, Twitch implements two filtering systems, by categories and by tags, which allow people interested in a specific type of content to easily access channels of interest to them.
While reaching the top is never easy, using the platform is simple and accessible to everyone, and this has led to more and more anonymous people, as well as “celebrities” from within and outside the digital world, deciding to take the plunge and start using Twitch.
