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Millions of people do? I do. There's a few reasons I do:

* Streamers connect with their audiences, I can chat with them live - ask questions about the game or technique

* Streamers are entertainers. They joke, cry, rage with you. They are engaging people.

* Community. I'm a subscriber to person X, so are you!

* Skill. Streamers are often the best in the world at their games.

* Can't play now. Cooking? Folding laundry? Watch some twitch.

* Events. Exports, and charity events like games done quick are amazing.

* Discoverability. Finding a new game or a new streamer for a game I like is super easy.

How do you build a business? Some streamers have thousands of people paying them $5 a month. Twitch takes a cut. They show ads, they collect donations, they sell in game products and the games themselves. (Twitch splits the revenue for those with their streamers. ) It's powered by viewers and ad revenue, is what I'd guess.



Ahah! So it's kind of like podcasting meets a "let's play"; makes sense.


But with real-time chat with the content creator!


How can you chat with your streamer when the live chat feed is a massive spam box due to the sheer volume of users? Unless of course you're watching the lesser known streamers.


Steamers shape their communities. Even with 10k people watching, some have very civil chats.


Subscriber only mode on chat cuts back on the spam.




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