TwitchTV is an online video platform designed for broadcasting and viewing people playing video games live. The site attracted 8 million unique viewers in July of 2011. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and was created by Justin Kan

Justin Kan

Justin Kan is an Internet entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder of live video platforms Justin.tv and TwitchTV, as well as the mobile social video application, Socialcam. He also serves as a part-time partner at venture capital firm Y Combinator...

 and Emmett Shear

Emmett Shear

Emmett Shear is an Internet entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder of live video platforms Justin.tv and TwitchTV. He's also a part-time partner at venture capital firm Y Combinator. Shear is also co-founder of Kiko Software, the first AJAX-based online calendar...

, two of the co-founders of Justin.tv

Justin.tv

Justin.tv is a website created by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt in 2007 that allows anyone to broadcast video online. Justin.tv user accounts are called "channels", and users are encouraged to broadcast a wide variety of user-generated live video content, called...

.

History

After Justin.tv launched in 2006, the site quickly began building subject-specific content categories like Social, Tech, Sports, Entertainment, News & Events, Gaming and others. Gaming, in particular, grew very fast and became the most popular content on the site.

The company then decided to spin off the gaming content under a separate brand at a separate site. They named it TwitchTV, inspired by the term twitch gameplay. It launched officially in public beta on June 6, 2011.

Partners

In July 2011, TwitchTV launched its Partner Program. Similar to the Partner Program of other video sites like YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

, the TwitchTV Partner Program allows popular content producers to share in the ad revenue generated from their streams.

TwitchTV's partners include popular professional gamers, tournaments, leagues and other gaming organizations including Day9, IGN Pro League, DreamHack

DreamHack

DreamHack is a digital festival, a local area network gathering with demo competitions, gaming competitions and more. It's arranged twice annually at the Elmia exhibition centre in Jönköping, Sweden and also twice a year at Expolaris Congresscenter, Skellefteå, Sweden and holds the world record ...

, Towelliee, Swiftor, 4Player Podcast

4Player Podcast

4Player Podcast is a multiple award-winning weekly podcast in addition to a daily live broadcast and website about video games; based out of Austin, Texas. The four founding members of the podcast are Brad Simons, David Liao, Nick Henderson and formerly Travis Granger...

, Destructoid

Destructoid

Destructoid is an independent video game-focused blog based in San Francisco, California that was founded in March 2006. It has since grown into one of the most widely read video game sites on the Internet, reaching more than 3 million unique visitors per month...

, Electronic Sports League, and others.

Content and audience

TwitchTV features a broad range of videogame streams including all game genres like real-time strategy

Real-time strategy

Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....

 (RTS) games, fighting games, racing games, and first-person shooter

First-person shooter

First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...

 games, among others. Popular titles on the site include StarCraft II

StarCraft II

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and released by Blizzard Entertainment for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. A sequel to the award-winning 1998 video game StarCraft and its expansions, the game was released worldwide on July 27, 2010...

, Call of Duty: Black Ops

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Call of Duty: Black Ops is a first-person shooter video game developed by Treyarch, published by Activision and released worldwide on November 9, for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii consoles, with a separate version for Nintendo DS developed by n-Space. Announced on April 30, 2010,...

, League of Legends

League of Legends

The BetFred League of Legends was a darts tournament featuring some of the legends of the game of darts which commenced in May 2008. The tournament is broadcast on Setanta Sports in the United Kingdom....

, Street Fighter

Street Fighter

, commonly abbreviated as SF, is a series of Fighting Games developed in Japan in which the players pit the video games' competitive fighters from around the world, each with his or her own unique fighting style, against one another...

, HALO

Halo (series)

Halo is a multi-million dollar science fiction video game franchise created by Bungie and now managed by 343 Industries and owned by Microsoft Studios. The series centers on an interstellar war between humanity and a theocratic alliance of aliens known as the Covenant...

, and many others.