Twitch released their 2015 Retrospective a few days ago. Twitch has been releasing year-in-review infographic analysis since 2013 (having both a 2013 and 2014 Retrospective online as well), so it's an interesting way to keep track of the rise of Twitch, and how it has gained its hold on gaming video distribution online.
There's a lot to love from this past year's analytics: A massive amount of money was raised for charity ($17.4 Million raised for 55+ charities), an insane amount of total time watched by users (241 trillion minutes, or 459 thousand years), and a higher monthly time-watched amount per user than YouTube (Twitch has 421.6 minutes compared to YouTube's 291 minutes). That being said, there's one statistic that left me in a bit more amazement, for a much different reason.
Out of 2.1 million broadcasters, only 13.5 thousand of those are partnered streamers. Being a Twitch Partner has its benefits, including your channel gaining access to a formal Twitch 'subscription' button, the ability to create community-based 'teams' for up-and-coming streamers to network, global emoticons that can be used site-wide, and higher priority server rankings, which allow for a more consistent and variable stream performance than non-partnered streamers. Basically, being a Twitch Partner is the official 'seal of approval' from Twitch themselves, acting as an extension of Twitch's branding.
Now, I'm no math professor, but according to my calculations, that's less than 1% of ALL Twitch streamers having access to what could be considered crucial functionality. This also brings about the fact that for a $4.99 subscription to a partnered Twitch streamer, Twitch themselves take $2.49, or half. This simple fact means that Twitch is leaving a ton of money on the table, so the argument of 'we have to be selective, as our server infrastructure can't support too many partnered streamers at once' is a bit misinformed. If you allow more partners, your earnings potentially go up, funding a better infrastructure for future partners, etc. It's a self-sustaining loop, one that Twitch seems to be timid to fully embrace. Granted, we're only working with numbers Twitch has given us, and there's no way of being in the conference room when the committee's diagnostics are brought out for discussion. We also aren't aware of future plans for the Twitch partnership program, so this information should be taken with a grain of salt, with realistic expectations for the future.
I bring this up not as sour grapes, or 'why can't I be a Twitch partner', but as a way of viewing Twitch as what it truly should be for 99% of its userbase: A hobby, and nothing more. Twitch has some initiatives for showcasing "upcoming talent", but that's also misguided: To qualify for the 'Partner Spotlight' on the front page, you guessed it, you need to be a Twitch Partner, a part of the 1%. The rich get richer, as they say. This brings about another question of infrastructure: Are the 1% of Twitch partners really responsible for the full well-being of the 99%? Do the earnings of 13 thousand users pay for the other 2.1 million? Why on Earth would you make your website's server infrastructure dependent on the performance of such a small amount of your total userbase?
I've returned to Twitch, and I can say that I'm doing fine. Because of donations from amazing supporters through applications such as TwitchAlerts, custom emoticons for my chat courtesy of BetterTwitchTV and FrankerFaceZ, and even a makeshift subscription system thanks to GameWisp, I have all of my bases covered. I don't NEED Twitch's services to succeed, and neither do a huge chunk of up-and-coming streamers, and therein lies the problem: If such an overwhelming majority of your users have to use third-party accessories to get what is considered core functionality by many viewers, who are you really rewarding with Twitch Partnership? The money I make from donations and third-party subscriptions isn't being given to Twitch at all, they're being left in the dust. For a company that is worried about funding infrastructure to acquire more talent to their service, Twitch sure seems fine with not getting paid where money is already happily changing hands.
I will say that seeing these statistics has done a great thing for me, though: No longer will I have the inkling of trying to 'make it big' on Twitch. This will purely stay a hobby, albeit a passionate one, and my only goal will be to spend time with the fantastic people and streamers I've come to know as friends through the course of my streaming endeavor. It's a fun playground, one that rewards mutual appreciation and supporting one another through the good times and the bad. It's just a shame that statistically speaking, Twitch isn't quite as confident in their users as their users are in Twitch.
Give more people Partnership, Twitch. Your infrastructure will thank you.
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