Headline, November 09 2022/ ''' '' TWITCH STREAMERS TWIRLS '' '''

''' '' TWITCH STREAMERS

 TWIRLS '' '''

REBELLION IN THE AIR among Twitch streamers. The service plans to take a bigger cut of the money made from subscriptions.

KEVIN LIN - TWITCH'S CO-FOUNDER AND chief operating officer, left in 2020. Sara Clemens, Mr. Lin's replacement, and Michael Aragon, the chief content officer, both departed this year.

Ms. Clemens reacted to the subscription revenue change by tweeting ''SMH,'' which stand for ''shaking my head.'' Rebellion is in the air among Twitch streamers. The service plans to take a bigger cut of the money made from subscriptions.

Mr. Lin was considered to be the face of the less technical areas of Twitch, like managing streamer relationships. Mr. Aragon was someone ''who could go into the executive meetings and fight toe-to-toe'' against proposals that were unfavorable to streamers, said Zachary Diaz, who worked on Mr. Aragon's team and left Twitch in January.

''Unfortunately every executive who had that as a mentality has left,'' he said. Ms. Faught, the Twitch spokeswoman, said that was ''absolutely inaccurate.'' She said beefing up product and engineering teams was ''not at odds with prioritizing relationships with streamers.'' 

For years, Twitch has wrestled with whether it can balance profitability with being a place where video game players can happily make good money from livestreaming to fans.

That conundrum dogged the platform as it grew from a small start-up called Justin.tv to an Amazon-owned, pandemic-fueled behemoth in the world of live video. Today, as many as eight million streamers broadcast their game exploits, cooking experiments and political hot takes every month to the 31 million viewers who visit the platform each day.

Along the way, Twitch has mostly maintained the good will of the streamers who are its lifeblood. But that has been changing, and streamers say they are increasingly worried that they're being forgotten by the platform as it pursues profits.

More than a dozen star Twitch streamers have switched to YouTube in recent years, and the service risks losing more to other livestreaming platforms.

REBELLION was in the air this month at TwitchCon, a gathering of 30,000 people in San Diego where fans meet their favorite streamers in person.

Streamers, while holding their usual meet-and-greets and reuniting with their friends, said they were angry about a recent decision Twitch made to take a greater cut of the revenue some streamers make from fans subscribing to their channels - a change they believe is emblematic of Twitch's shifting priorities.

''The displeasure with that decision is tangible,'' said Taylor Drury, who streams on Twitch as Taylien. '' We're all confirming with each other : ' You hate this?' 'Yeah, we all hate this.'''

Streamers say that there are other signs that Twitch is losing touch with its community, a complaint that has been leveled at other streaming and video services over the years as they have matured.

An effort by Twitch to persuade streamers to run more advertisements on their channels has dismayed creators who say more ads will repel their viewers. The executives who were considered to be the biggest supporters of the streamer community have departed.

Streamers say communication with the company has deteriorated, and they believe Twitch has prioritized adding engineers over hiring people to handle their concerns.

Samantha Faught, a Twitch spokeswoman, said Twitch had tripled the number of employees in ''community-facing'' roles in the past two years and added new ways for streamers to give feedback. She acknowledged that because of the platform's rapid growth, ''it becomes harder to scale the personalized communication and feeling of close connection.'' She said relationships with streamers remained a priority.

Streamers also wonder if Twitch is under pressure from Amazon, which purchased the service in 2014.  Andy Jassy, who took over as Amazon's chief executive in July 2021, has looked for ways to control costs this year as Amazon's growth has slowed to its lowest level in two decades.

The company has focused on efficiencies in its warehouses, shuttered teams with lackluster projects and temporarily frozen hiring in its retail division.

Amazon does not break out Twitch's financials, though analysts do not believe the site, which has more than 1,800 employees, turns a profit.

''It's wild that Amazon is trying to force Twitch to squeeze more revenue out of top content creators,'' Hasan Piker, one of the site's biggest names, said in an interview.

At his booth on the convention floor, Mr. Piker, known as HasanAbi on Twitch, was giving out faux newspaper front pages with a provocative headline : ''Twitch steals 30% of Revenue from Content Creators.''

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Social Media and Status and Rebellions, continues. The World Students Society thanks author Kellen Browning.

With respectful dedication to the Founder Framers of The World Students Society - the exclusive ownership of every student in the world - and then Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on !WOW! : wssciw.blogspot.com and ............ Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

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