Twitch, A Growing Personal Pod Casting Site For Gamers, Beat Facebook, Hulu, And Others In Peak Website Traffic Last Week
ByTwitch began as Justin.TV in 2007 as a site for users to broadcast their lives, just like one of the company's creators, Justin Kan, used to do on a 24-hour basis, popularizing the term, "life casting." It's had its ups and downs over the years, including mention on the Late Show, a deal with FOX, a live suicide by one of its users, and accusations of copyright infringement.
More recently, the personal podcasting site has rebranded itself into a personal podcasting site for gamers, Twitch. It's generating more peak traffic (1.8 percent) than web giants like Facebook, Hulu, Amazon, and Pandora, according to a study by analytics company, Deep Field, Gamespot reported.
The study tracked peak traffic for the week ending on Feb. 3. Netflix (32 percent) and Google (22 percent) dominated the top two spots, while Apple maintained a strong position in third (4.6 percent). Hitch grabbed fourth place (1.8 percent) with a .1 percentage point lead over Hulu (1.7 percent) and .3 over Facebook (1.5 percent).
"It's wonderful validation that Twitch is now officially playing in the big leagues. Apple, Hulu, Valve, Netflix, Amazon and the like are awesome company to keep", Twitch's VP of Marketing Matthew DiPietro told onGamers. "Of course this is something our engineers have known for some time, since they are actively scaling our infrastructure to meet the intense demand growth curve. We're laser-focused on that which is no small task!"
Basically, Twitch allows users to broadcast their games onto the internet to build rivalries, admiration, and fame between gamers all over the world.
"Twitch is the world's leading video platform and community for gamers with more than 45 million visitors per month," goes the first paragraph of the site's "About Me." "We want to connect gamers around the world by allowing them to broadcast, watch, and chat from everywhere they play."
Perhaps most exciting for the average site user is the chance to watch some of the "most dedicated and highly skilled gamers on the planet." Twitch also hosts tournaments and has its own gaming shows.