5 ms·
Gotta hand it to Emmett Shear for finding and doubling down on the one genuinely great use for live video streaming that exists today. There was a lot of excit
by staunch 13y ago
Gotta hand it to Emmett Shear for finding and doubling down on the one genuinely great use for live video streaming that exists today.
There was a lot of excitement and competition in live streaming from 2005 - 2008. In the end it all turned out to be a giant waste of energy and money. No one succeeded in a big way.
I'm not sure I buy the idea that "electronic sports" will be as big as Twitch thinks. I certainly don't think it will ever compete with real sports programming. I do think it's very real though and Twitch is a really great service that will continue to grow.
Maybe in another 10 years we'll find that there are two good uses for live streaming.
- KaoruAoiShiho 13y agoGoogle Glass will be the killer app for live streaming, but Youtube will probably benefit more from it than Justin/Twitch for obvious reasons (or it should unless the youtube team completely drops the ball, I have been very unimpressed by the pace of innovation at youtube).
- justin 13y agoHeh. I'm skeptical live streaming from Glass will ever become a thing many people do. Having some direct experience with it, most people just don't want to do personal live streams.
- edias 13y agoI would disagree for the most part when it comes to twitch. Games such as Stacraft have many small details happening at once that informed viewers wan't to be paying attention to, and on a small screen a lot of it blurs together. I've watched on my phone before and all of the small things escaped me despite knowing what to look for.
- emmett 13y agoThanks :-) Side note: One thing people miss is that Twitch is a lot bigger than just eSports. It may create the flashiest, biggest events, but on a day-to-day basis most of our viewership is on stuff that's much more about interactive sharing than it is about competition.
- hkmurakami 13y agowe've come a lonnnng ways since the latenight bootleg korean starcraft stream watching days of the 2005-2008 era, and Twitch has helped make huge leaps forward. My life as a viewer has never been more convenient or filled with options. Thanks from a former Team Liquid admin :).
- edias 13y agoHow much of that is twitch's doing and how much is just increased foreign interest in the Korean Starcraft scene though? GomTV had an English stream through GOM player well before being forced to use Twitch by Blizzard, and OGN still half asses their foreign stream.
- thejosh 13y agoMaybe not for the Korean scene, however their move to Twitch wasn't forced by Blizzard, as they used Twitch for a while beforehand in periodic spots when their main site was having issues. Blizzard DID force them to show it on twitch, which is great. There are numerous other tournaments that wouldn't get the exposure they have today if it wasn't for Twitch.TV.
- broodbucket 13y agoIt's already quite strong and it's continually growing. Twitch doesn't need eSports to be bigger than the Super Bowl.