Twitch is a spinoff of what website? In a word, Twitch is a spinoff of Justin.tv. However, that doesn’t tell the whole story. If you are the kind person who likes to know what you are reading about, stick around while we explain everything you need to know about Twitch, its parent company as well as Justin.tv.
So, what is Twitch?
Today, Twitch is one of the most popular live-streaming platforms in the world, mainly used for streaming games. Broadcasting of everything, from amateur game streamers to eSports tournaments to millions of people worldwide happen through Twitch. How popular in terms of numbers? As of February 2020, Twitch recorded a total of 3.8 million unique creators worldwide operating on their platform.
So, if you are not a gamer or care about games, why should you care? Twitch also offers a wide variety of content other than video-game streams. Twitch empowers any creator interested in lifestyle casting about specific subjects like food, music, etc., with the power to stream their activity to millions of viewers worldwide in real-time.
What is streaming in Twitch all about?
As a streamer in Twitch, you can broadcast your gameplay recording or capture, to your viewers all around the world. Said viewers get not just to see and hear the way the games plays out, but also hear and see the streamer himself/herself through a small split-screen at one of the edges of the main screen.
You as a streamer can also feature affiliate Steam links for the games that you play. If a viewer, purchases the same game through your affiliate link, then you too get a commission on a successful sale.
As a viewer, you also can comment on a streamer’s stream, alongside other viewers. Depending on the channel, you might even be able to make suggestions, ask questions and get real-time answers.
All of this functionality is, in fact, free to use. However, if you find yourself more invested, Twitch also offers three tiers of paid subscriptions that not only help make your viewer experience ad-free or provide access to exclusive emotes or badges. It also goes a long way in supporting the streamer so that they can afford better gaming hardware, allowing him/her to make better streams for you to enjoy in the process.
The parent company of Twitch
Twitch’s parent company is Amazon. In case you are unaware, Amazon is better known to the public as an e-commerce website and the makers of home-automation techs, such as Alexa, based in Seattle, Washington, USA. However, what many might not be aware of is that Amazon is a lead company is many more highly specialized fields. Such fields include Cloud Computing, Digital Streaming (Twitch), Consumer Electronics, Web Services, and Artificial Intelligence.
Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos during the mid-90s and started as online bookselling and delivery service. Today Jeff Bezos is currently Amazon’s CEO as well as the wealthiest man in the world.
And finally, what is Justin.tv?
Justin.tv was a website created by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt in 2007. The website’s objective was to give anyone in the world a platform to broadcast their daily activities online, on the site. In the initial days, the user accounts were called channels, just like in YouTube and the live content said user would be generating was called “broadcasts”.
Starting, Justin Kan was the only user, and his account was the only user-account in Justin. Tv, where he would broadcast his life 24/7, eventually popularizing the term “lifecasting”. Justin.tv received seed funding from Paul Graham of seed capital firm Y Combinator and Series A funding with Alsop Louie Partners and Draper Associates.
In the original Justin.tv, with a single channel featuring Justin Kan, Justin would wear a webcam attached to a baseball hat while carrying a portable laptop-backpack system (designed by co-founder Kyle Vogt) to capture and stream the recorded content online. By the summer of 2007, Justin.tv grew to accommodate 60 channels. By August 2007, the addition of new channels was occurring at the rate of two a day.
The novelty of the concept, at the time, lied in the fact that the users would be able to broadcast to an unlimited number of people worldwide for free and viewers all around the world would be able to view the content without the requirement of any user-registration procedure. Justin.tv’s Terms of Service, however, prevented channels from posting pornographic content or from broadcasting content in copyright violations, defamation or criminal conduct encouragement.
On February 10th, 2014 Twitch and its parent company Justin.tv would be rebranded as Twitch Interactive, and by August 5th, 2014 Justin.tv would be officially shut down so that the company could better focus on Twitch.
