The History of Twitch and Why It Become So Popular
The history of Twitch started In 2007 when four friends decided to launch a unique project. Justin Kahn, one of the founders, decided to broadcast his life 24/7 on Justin.tv. A camera was attached to his head, and users could watch him walk, eat, socialize, and even sleep. This idea gave birth to a new format of online entertainment, although the team had no idea at the time how scalable the project would become and how many jobs would be created by their creation in the future.
First Steps
As Justin was streaming his life, his friends Shire and Vogt were searching for an opportunity to broaden the project. It was at this time that they came up with a feature that enables anyone to stream online out of a webcam. The viewers began to stream the walkthrough of the games, publishing strategies, and discussing actions in live mode. In 2011 the founders understood that this is the segment attracting most of the viewership, and thought it reasonable to make a separate project with videos about video games – Twitch.
Incredible Success
The event that could be considered a starting point of online streaming services development was the creation of Twitch in 2011. As of December 2012, over 20 million individuals were going online to the platform to catch the streams every month. Here is the main advantage of Twitch: where you can watch walkthroughs of games simultaneously, the viewers also have a chance to communicate with the authors using the chat. It was then that the first forms of chat moderators started to emerge into the system. At one point it was a purely amateur endeavor, and now chat moderation is already a separate profession, and you can even find vacancies for chat moderators on Jooble. Now, similar to 2012, chat moderators are also working on content moderation on streaming platforms like Twitch.
Key Events
In 2012, the platform won the right to officially broadcast the World Cyber Games 2012. This success also attracted investors: several large companies invested about $15 million in the development of Twitch. In 2013, Twitch united all of the team’s previous projects under the Twitch Media Group brand. The platform became the official channel for major eSports events such as Dota 2, League of Legends, and Starcraft 2. And later Microsoft used the platform to show gameplay of World of Tanks before its release on Xbox 360.
Another key step in the development of Twitch was the ability to integrate streaming directly into video games. Now any player could start broadcasting his gameplay by simply pressing one button. In addition, there was no strict corporate censorship on Twitch, which allowed content creators to feel free.
It's Just Beginning
By the end of 2013, Twitch site had already established itself as a significant tool within the gaming industry and subculture. However, the greatest event in Twitch’s history occurred in 2014 – the company bought Amazon for $970m. This was a significant phase of the project, through which an opportunity for the next level of utilities’ access and possibilities appeared. Twitch remained very active and today is the workstation actively growing and is one of the leaders in the world of video game streaming.
