Twitch began as a side category and ended up swallowing its parent
Justin.tv was a general streaming site with many categories, but one kept outgrowing the rest: people watching other people play video games. In 2011 the founders spun gaming off as Twitch. Within three years it drew more peak American internet traffic than all but three companies, and Amazon bought it.
Justin Kan and Emmett Shear, two recent Yale graduates, launched Justin.tv in 2007. When gaming became its most popular content, they split it out in June 2011, naming it after twitch gameplay, the fast-reflex style of play. Venture money followed, including 15 million dollars in 2012 and 20 million in 2013, and by 2013 the company was thought to be profitable. After a direct rival, Own3d.tv, shut down that year, Twitch dominated esports streaming so thoroughly that some described it as a near monopoly.
Growth was startling. By mid-2013 it had more than 43 million monthly viewers, with the average one watching an hour and a half a day. In February 2014 it ranked fourth for peak US internet traffic, behind only Netflix, Google and Apple. That same month the parent company renamed itself Twitch Interactive, and a viral experiment called Twitch Plays Pokémon, in which thousands of viewers steered one game by typing commands into chat, showed how participatory the medium could be. The original Justin.tv closed that August.
Google's YouTube was reported to have a preliminary deal to buy Twitch for about a billion dollars, but it fell through, reportedly over antitrust worries. Amazon stepped in with 970 million dollars in cash in August 2014. Shear stayed on as chief executive, and a games company holding a 2 per cent stake made 22 million dollars.
Under Amazon, Twitch linked perks to Prime subscriptions and let viewers buy Bits to cheer on streamers, effectively a tipping system. By 2015 it passed 100 million viewers a month.
Source: Twitch (service)
