Ever Evolving Streaming Platforms
The one constant thing that aligns the streaming platforms such as Twitch, YouTube and Facebook Gaming, is viewer loyalty. When Mixer was able to bring over Ninja and Shroud, two of the larger streamers Twitch had at the time. Many of those two streamers viewers did not join them over on Mixer. Debate continues into whether it was platform confusion or simply because many, if not most of them were more brand loyal to Twitch and not too the streamers themselves. Throughout the year viewer numbers continued to fall or flatten, casting doubt into the acquisitions validity of making Mixer an actual competitor to Twitch.
Following the collapse and subsequent return of both Ninja and Shroud, Twitch has continued to be a household name with gamers and fans of live-streaming celebrities. Unfortunately, this creates a void of competition in which the larger platform complacent and begins to scale down innovation of the platform. We have seen this within the past year as Twitch use to announce during their prior yearly TwitchCons, new upcoming features that streamers could offer to their viewers. Things like Squad streaming, channel points and more. 2020 offered only improvements to ads and during the latter half of the year, when Twitch was hit hard with strongly enforcing DMCA requests. The service doubled down and focused on providing streamers better tools to delete all their VODs. Currently Twitch has plans for the entirely of 2021 in releasing or refining tools for streamers in helping them stay DMCA compliant. Which for a company that prides itself on being on the forefront of live-streaming, they missed the mark over eight years ago as DMCA was being pushed hard against YouTube. Who spent the resources to help make things better for their users and creators.
Currently there are only three large live-streaming platforms with the viewer base and funding to continue to fight amongst themselves over viewer ad dollars. When new platforms come around, many people simply dismiss them as nothing more than pipe-dreams who do not stand a chance against the likes of Twitch. For those that a blazing a path on a platform like Trovo or Glimesh. They see themselves as pioneers heading west for a chance in finding themselves or creating a community, they never could have done with the big three. For Glimesh, the people behind it make it known that they are not directly competing against Twitch. They wanted to create something that’s open source and for the community. Will these new platforms become large enough after several years to start taking a stand against Twitch and the others? It is hard to say now, but one thing is clear. There is a market for more competition and content creators or ready.
