Best Live Streaming Platfoms and Twitch Analysis with SWOT

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, live streaming services have become a cornerstone of entertainment, communication, and online interaction, particularly within the gaming and e-sports communities. This comprehensive guide delves into the intricate world of live streaming platforms, offering readers a detailed overview of the best services available, including Twitch, YouTube Gaming, Mixer, and more.

From the rise of Twitch as the leading streaming giant to emerging platforms like DLive and BigoLive, we’ll explore the dynamic ecosystem of live streaming services. Additionally, we cover essential tools like Discord for enhancing viewer interaction and streamer communication. Prepare to embark on a journey through the world of live streaming, where we’ll unveil the opportunities, challenges, and statistics that define this digital phenomenon.

What To Know About Live Streaming Servies

With the development of the e-sports industry, new platforms have emerged that will broadcast live tournaments in this field. Turkey as well as in the world, especially by the utilization Y and Z generations of intense interest to the live broadcast platform high. Thanks to smartphones and the internet, it is now very easy to watch or broadcast from anywhere. Accordingly, in the world and in Turkey live broadcast by internet publishing, and there are hundreds of artists who popularized earnings. Although these names are broadcasting as a hobby, internet broadcasting is a professional business and profits for many publishers. For this reason, internet broadcasting brings many advantages for both the audience and the broadcaster.

Best Live Streaming Services

YouTube Gaming

Google closed the Youtube Gaming application, which it launched as a competitor to Twitch, another live broadcast platform, last year. But it still serves as a tab under Youtube.

Twitch

Twitch is a live video streaming service operated by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon (970M$ – September 2014). Twitch is the biggest live streaming platform in the market.

Mixer

Mixer is another live streaming platform launched in 2016. Microsoft owned, this platform entered the market under the name of Beam and later took the name Mixer. The service attaches importance to interaction as a platform that allows low flow latency and viewers to take actions that can affect flow.

InstaGib TV

On InstaGib TV, viewers can connect to high quality streaming without the need for third-party apps, and InstaGib TV also offers viewers a chat screen during live streaming. The biggest feature of this site is that the publications are of high quality.

SmashCast

Azubu announced acquisition of Hitbox in January 2017. On May 9, 2017, Azubu and Hitbox, both were online broadcasting website, were shut down and SmashCast were established. With focus on e-sports, SmashCast announced new features, for instance the “Hype-o-Meter” a feed on every profile page, and an integration with Discord.

BigoLive

Bigolive is a live streaming platform owned by Singapore-based Bigo Technology. In March 2016 BigoLive was launched in Singapore. Biggest feature of this platform is applying AI features to offer live streaming services.

Gosu Gamers

Gosu Gamers founded in 2002 as a hobby project. But they grown to one of the biggest e-sports live streaming platforms. Nowadays, Gosu Gamers is one of the main source for HQ (high quality) e-sports content. In 2014, Gosu Gamers became a brand of Gosu Media. Gosu Media reach an audience of more than 2.500.000 unique viewers per month.

Dlive

DLive, a US-based initiative, started test broadcasts in November 2017. In DLive, which has a similar logic of work with rival platforms, viewers donate to their favorite broadcasts, enabling broadcasters to earn points. Publishers who earn points can convert the points they earn through the Lino Network into money.

What is Twitch?

Twitch is a live video streaming service. Twitch Interactive is the biggest and most popular platform in live video streaming market. Twitch Interactive was purchased by Amazon for $ 970 million in September 2014 and becomes a subsidiary of Amazon. When Twitch was first installed, it was almost entirely focused on video games. But since then Twitch; expanded to include streams of music, talk shows, artwork, and TV shows. Twitch boasts with over two million unique streamers every month and more than 18 thousand of these users earn money owing to the Twitch Partner program. Twitch Partner program is a service that provides broadcasters some features such as paid subscriptions and advertisements placements.

Two entrepreneurs, Justin Ken and Emmett Shear, established an online streaming platform called Justin Tv with a $ 6 Million budget in 2007. Streammers were broadcasting to unlimited number of people without paying any money and viewers were watching broadcasts without user registration. Streamings that are thought to contain potentially offensive content could only be watched by registered users over the age of 18. Broadcasts containing insult, pornography or copyright violations, or encouraging criminal conduct, were banned by Justin.tv’s conditions of service.

With the development of the e-sports industry, broadcasters broadcasting on Justin Tv started to share the games they played. Category of gaming grew particularly rapid and became the most popular category on the site. Thus, in 2011, the company separated the game category and established Twitch. In 2014, Twitch.tv’s number one game platform managed to become the 4th most visited website at peak hours and 43 million monthly users visited the site. After these statistics Twitch.tv became the official live streaming platform for the Esports Industry late in 2014.

SWOT Analysis of Twitch

Thanks to SWOT analysis, we can see the positions that companies are currently in the market and where they will be in the future. The strengths of Twitch.tv actually mean advantages over its competitors. Weaknesses mean the disadvantages and features that need to be corrected compared to their competitors. Opportunities part means external factors that the establishment can utilize to its advantage. Threat part is defining the threats that existing and emerging external factors that may challenge the establishment’s performance.

Strengths

1. Expansion due to purchase with $970 million by Amazon is bring huge advantages compare to competitors in the same market.
2. Community of over 1.5 million streamers. This feature is making Twitch.tv more popular.
3. Broadcasting rights of major e-sports tournaments. In this way people trust Twitch.tv because it is official.
4. Strong website security.

Weaknesses

1. Slow broadcasting bandwidth when compared to competitor Smashcast. But they are working on it.
2. Due to community of streamers size, difficult to be noticed for new streamers.
3. Individual streamer’s videos are limited to 14 days but 30 days for Turbo users.

Opportunities

1. Streamers contents can be sponsored by Influencer Campaign
2. Possible sponsor expansion as Esports industry rises.
3. Twitch.tv is ranked 4th in internet viewing during peak hours, creating more demand for ads. So, streamers can make money with ads.

Threats

1. Biggest competitor of Twitch is Smashcast because bandwidth of this platform quicker.
2. Another competitor is Dlive.
3. Mixer is the one of the competitors of Twitch because Microsoft invest this platform for being better. Also, Ninja, biggest streamers of Twitch transfer to Microsoft Mixer.

Statistics

• 81.5% of Twitch users are male.
• 55% of Twitch users are aged between 18 and 34.
• More than fifteen million daily active users visit Twitch.tv.
• 44 billion minutes video watch per months.
• 27 thousand partners support Twitch.
• Fortnite is most popular game in 2018.

Other Twitch.tv Statistics You May Interested in

Top 10 Popular Twitch Streamers in 2020

1. Ninja: With more than 14.7 million followers, Ninja is currently the biggest streamer on Twitch. But he announced that he would stop broadcasting on Twitch in August 2019. Ninja transfer to Microsoft Mixer. The person behind this channel is a 29-year-old Richard Tyler Blevins.
2. Tfue: Tfue has massive followers of more than 7 million in October 2019. He is one of the biggest high earners of this platform with $500 thousand
3. Shroud: Shroud is one of the top Twitch channels with a 6.45 million followers.
4. TSM | Myth: Myth is a Fortnite player with a 5.1 million followers also he is the captain of Team Solo Mid.
5. Dakotaz: Dakotaz is another Fortnite player with 4.08 million followers. Unlike other streamers Dakotaz does not show his face during play games.
6. Riot Games: More than 4 million followers Riot Games placed at 6^th place. Riot Games streams League of Legend.
7. Tim the Tatman: With 4.04 million followers Tim the Tatman is 7^th biggest streaming channel of Twitch platform.
8. Submit1g: With 3.97 million followers he is standing at 8^th place.
9. Dr. Disrespect: With 3.71 million followers Dr. Disrespect one of the most outrageous streamers on Twitch.
10. TSM | Daequan: With more than 3.71 million followers Daequan is standing 10^th pace of this list.

What You Need To Know About Discord

Discord application was born as a competitor to Team Speak application, it is the communication network generally used by gamers. It has more than 250 million users as of July 21, 2019. Discord application can be entered on the phone as well as on the computer. Apart from the web, it is also available in iOS and Android markets. One of the nicest things about the Discord is that this application is completely free.

Realizing that in-game voice communication is challenging in games such as Final Fantasy and League of Legends, and services such as Skype and TeamSpeak have too many negative aspects, Jason Citron started developing an easier and more modern communication tool.

Discord was released in May 2015. According to Citron, Discord’s advertisement was most advertised on the Reddit platform, and some Reddit Forums (subreddit) removed their chat servers from the IRC service to Discord. Discord became especially popular among local-network (LAN) players and Twitch broadcasters.

How Discord Works?

Discord is a personal freeware VoIP application and digital distribution platform designed for e-gaming communities, that specializes in audio, text, image and video communication between users in a chat channel. The vast majority of voice and text chats in Discord pass through servers. Servers act as a hub in two parts: text channels and sound channels. Think of every server you join as a huge house; every channel user join represents a room where users can chat with their friends. Users can switch between text channels as they wish. However, users can only be on a single voice server on Discord.

Statistics

14 million players on daily basis, 315 million messages sent a day, and 250 plus million active Discord users can demonstrate you the real picture of the achievement and popularity of Discord. Discord is built on the freemium business model. Basic services are free for users. But users able to access premium features through paying additional charges.

Here some statistics in 2018:

• Discord had 45 Million registered users in 2017 but this statistic grew to 130 Million registered users in 2018.
• In 2017, there are only 8.7 Million daily users but in 2018 there are 19 Million daily users
• In 2017 there are 4 Million concurrent users but this numbers multiply with 2 in 2018.
• In 2017 Discord users sent 6 billion messages but when we look at the 2018, we can see that these users sent 15 billion messages.

References

1.  Solarita Mohanty, (2019, May) 10 Best Live Streaming Platforms. Vidooly. Retrivered on 12.05.2020 at https://vidooly.com/blog/live-game-streaming-platforms/

• Joseph McManus, (2016, May, 18). Twitch Presetation.LinkedIn Slideshare. Retrivered on 12.05.2020 at https://www.slideshare.net/JosephMcManus2/twitch-presentation-62156169

• Massimo Milani, (2018, Dec, 11). Twıtch The Busıness Analysıs.Medium. Retrivered on 22.05.2020 at https://medium.com/@MassimoMilani/twitch-the-business-analysis-17d1a47cbb5b

• Twitch Statistcs and Charts. Twitch Tracker. Retrivered on 22.05.2020 at https://twitchtracker.com/statistics

• Shurti Sen, (2017, May). Top 10 Most Popular Twitch Streamers Sorted by Channel Views Vidooly. Retrivered on 22.05.2020 at https://vidooly.com/blog/top-twitch-streamers/

• Erel Alkan, (2019, July, 10). Discord Nedir? Nasıl Kullanılır?. Sosyologer. Retrivered on 22.05.2020 at https://www.sosyologer.com/discord-nedir-nasil-kullanilir/

• Stefanie Fogel, (2018, May, 15). Discord Turns Three, Hits 130 Million User Milestone Variety. Retrivered on 22.05.2020 at https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/discord-turns-three-1202810983/