A new era of online video may be coming. Is YouTube dominance at stake?



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The number of users grows year after year, the business model is stable as there are many advertisers and more and more people use the premium mode. However, there is still a gap in the shield that is becoming more and more visible. And the problem is called Twitch, which, based on the current position, seems likely to heat the monarch. We’ve been looking at what else it offers, who and why could be better, and if it could be a realistic challenge for YouTube in the future.

What is Twitch?

Twitch is an online video streaming provider, which means it has the same roots as YouTube. In 2011, it emerged as a separate entity from a larger platform called Justin.tv after growing out of bounds.

The most popular are player broadcasts, which are often broadcast by a professional commentator.Source: Twitchtracker

With Twitch, you can create channels to subscribe to in the same way, and the content on offer is available in a number of different ways.

Property fund

In 2014, it was rumored that Google would buy and merge Twitch on YouTube. However, the owners rightly thought that this would also mean the death of the rig.

Instead, they thought of a different concept and accepted Amazon’s offer later this year.

Therefore, Twitch is part of one of the largest corporate conglomerates in the world, providing a very stable material and technological base. This is also necessary as it is the only way to serve a large number of users with good image quality content. Amazon has also taken very serious steps in the past six months to build strong positions in content delivery, and one of the flagships in this effort is Twitch.

Where is it available?

Like YouTube, Twitch content is available through a website, mobile app, game console, and smart TV apps. Additionally, Amazon’s “own Netflixe” Amazon Prime dedicates a separate interface to the best and most popular Twitch streams, meaning that they have practically made it into an Internet TV show. In other words, there is practically not a family of electronic audiovisual products that does not have Twitch’s online streaming service available in some way.

The profile

The special feature of Twitch is that it basically focuses on live broadcasts. Most functions have been subordinated to this. This mainly distinguishes it from YouTube, where the main focus is even more on previously recorded material, and “live” is just one option among others.

Unlike YouTube, Twitch focuses on communicating with viewers during a broadcast, with a wide variety of customizable interfaces and manageable chat.

The user can configure practically anything to make things easier. There are a number of pre-made dashboards by Twitch developers that allow you to manage groups of viewers separately, create a separate stream for subscribers, for example, and provide financial support to channel owners very easily. Apparently, the developers are focused on making it easier for content creators to work with them, making the platform more attractive than rival solutions.

The main target group

Twitch started as a portal that basically specializes in games and is still the largest base in this community. This should be imagined as someone playing and while (at best) watching the crowds. Of course, during really successful streamers, they are constantly broadcasting what they are doing, they are in constant interactive contact with their viewers, who are therefore literally involved in the broadcast. The player industry has now overtaken the music and film sectors as well, so there is a lot of money in it and thus the masses are having fun this way. So this is also an important segment for advertisers, if only because basically younger people tend to play games or watch funny broadcasts, and they are of the utmost importance in the eyes of many large companies. Therefore, Twitch is built on a promising market, fundamentally very powerful and constantly growing.

At this point, we are there for the gamers, and Twitch is clearly the most important and popular of these services.

The big shots have tried to despise their feet in this area like Microsoft, Facebook or YouTube itself, but they have all failed. In addition to gamers, more and more people are using Twitch to make magazine shows. So they don’t play, talk, talk, cook or play music. For some time, it has also been possible to replenish “canned” non-living materials, but these currently play a marginal role.

Community interface

One of the tremendous attractions of Twitch is that it was organized quite slowly, almost invisibly, on a social site. There are many users who can easily communicate with each other in chats during broadcasts, for example. There are many who no longer go to the site specifically for specific shows, but to meet their virtual friends there. With this, practically unnoticed, they themselves become a kind of secondary content producer, increasing traffic to the site and adding to the user experience against their will.

The service is becoming more popular, the numbers have reached numbers recently.Source: Twitchtracker

It should also be mentioned here that the administration of Twitch, unlike, say, Facebook or YouTube, relies heavily on moderation. Aggressive threats, hate speech or pornographic content are punished immediately and very effectively, and intermediaries have every opportunity to eliminate viewers who cannot behave. For this reason, for many, this interface is much more attractive than YouTube or Facebook, where in many cases trolls take full control, either by posting or commenting.

Easy to use

The tremendous strength of Twitch is that it is much easier to use than any other rival platform. Currently we take into account that, for example, the transmission of a computer or console game can be started with a single click. You don’t have to install separate programs, play around with them, and the live image can be shared with anyone right away. There is no tracking number requirement like on YouTube, no need to add a Facebook or Microsoft account, which scares many.

For broadcasts, live broadcasts, the keyword system was invented very well, which is often completely automated. That way, you won’t have to deal with it either, but viewers have a high chance of easily finding the content that interests them.

Ascending numbers

That Twitch is on the right track is perfectly justified by the numbers. This is because they show that there are many people who turn to this platform, which also means that many people choose this instead of YouTube. In early 2021, we are there to choose from an average of ~ 121,000 live streams at a time, and the average permanent audience will be around 3,000,000. It lags behind what we say the most watched TV shows produce, except that it is a constant value, so it is not focused on the most popular half hour of the night, but on an average at that time. Approximately 7 million unique users launch streams each month, so a near number produces free content for Twitch.

On average, 3 million people watch broadcasts at all times.Source: Twitchtracker

In terms of views and audience, the numbers are still significantly lower than those produced by the great rival YouTube, but the trends do not allow Google’s video provider to be left behind. Twitch produced 60-70 percent growth in all key metrics in 2020 compared to 2019 data. Additionally, the number of producers has nearly doubled. And in 2021, interest in the platform increased. In terms of viewership, for example, the average numbers for the first month and a half of 2021 are about 50 percent better than the annual average for 2020, and if all that remains, those numbers will improve even more.

Is there a chance against YouTube?

In 2020, in terms of live streams, Twitch won in terms of viewership. They reached a market share of 63.6 percent, well ahead of YouTube (22.5%) and Facebook (14%). It’s just a “run” though, compared to YouTube’s canned, pre-made, ripped, and uploaded materials that still produce much, much more – roughly 100 times more viewers than Twitch.

We anticipate that Twitch’s dominance in live streaming will increase in the future as its needs will not be able to be served as effectively by a rival solution.

In all other areas, however, YouTube is still the dominant one, so the two platforms will be a good fit side by side, but a real murderous battle is not expected at the end of which one party fails.

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