| Twitch is an American video live streaming service operated by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. Introduced in June 2011 as a side project of the general-interest streaming platform Justin.tv, the webpage basically focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of esports competitions, in addition to music broadcasts, creative content, and more recently, "in real life" streams. Content on the site can be viewed either live or through video on interest.
The popularity of Twitch eclipsed that of its general-interest partner. In October 2013, the site had 45 million unique viewers, and by February 2014, it was considered as the fourth largest source of peak Internet traffic in the United States. Simultaneously, Justin.tv's parent organization was re-branded as Twitch Interactive to address the shift in focus – Justin.tv was closed down in August 2014. That month, the service was acquired by Amazon for US$970 million, which later prompted the introduction of synergies with the company's subscription service Amazon Prime. Twitch acquired Curse in 2016, an operator of online video gaming communities and introduced methods to purchase games through links on streams along with a program allowing streamers to get commissions on the sales of games that they play.
In late 2013, especially because of increasing viewership, Twitch had issues with lag and low frame rates in Europe. Twitch has consequently added new servers in the region. Also to address these issues, Twitch implemented another video system demonstrated to be more effective than the past system. At first, the new video system was condemned by users since it caused a huge stream delay, interfering with broadcaster-viewer interaction. Twitch staff said that the increased delay was likely temporary and at that time, was an acceptable tradeoff for the decrease in buffering.
By 2015, Twitch had in excess of 100 million viewers per month. As of 2017, Twitch remained the leading live streaming video service for video games in the US, and had an advantage over YouTube Gaming. As of February 2020, it had 3 million broadcasters monthly and 15 million daily active users, with 1.4 million average simultaneous users. As of May 2018, Twitch had more than 27,000 partner channels.
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