The Empire Strikes Again: YouTube buys Twitch.tv

The following is an announcement from the YouTube imperial forces.

Attention!

Loyal subscribers,

We understand that there may be some concern over our recent purchase of Twitch.tv. We are here to assuage those concerns. Many of our users enjoy streaming videos on Twitch, and we have no intention of stopping them. Everything will proceed normally, as it always has. There is no cause for alarm. Please resume watching or uploading videos. We wish you a grand day!

Sincerely,

YouTube.*

*This is an Evil-Emperor Parody of what I expect YouTube to say and was not actually commented by YouTube.

The Story

For those of you who haven’t yet heard from the Internet grapevine, YouTube has offered $1 billion to purchase Twitch, a popular gaming website that allows people to watch and stream live footage from various console games. Players superimpose their image over the gameplay and can interact with others while playing. These streams also feature chatrooms for people to communicate. The iconic example of this is, of course, the famous Twitch plays Pokémon.

Despite this picture, I actually really liked the idea. I just have to keep the evil empire theme running.

Twitch witnesses around 45 million users a month. During its rush hour, Twitch even receives more traffic worldwide than Facebook and Amazon!

I’m going to let that sink in for a second.

YouTube, by way of contrast, sees over 1 million unique users every month, but in that month, six billion hours of video are watched. Using mathematics, this is close to one hour per person on the planet.

I wanted to find an image of the YouTube logo imposed over the planet, but it doesn’t exist. Not because it’s not out there, but because it’s been censored!

Now, neither Youtube nor Twitch have released any comments at the time of this article, and the Wall Street Journal reports that the negotiations are still in an early stage.

But what can we take away from this?

The Meaning

Twitch might be the closest thing YouTube has to a competitor (lol Vine). The Telegraph (UK) believed that US regulators might challenge the purchase because of its anti-competitive nature. If successful, this purchase essentially establishes Darth YouTube as the emperor of online video sites. As a comparison, YouTube attempting to buy Twitch is like Facebook attempting to buy Snapchat (remember when that happened?)

Also, YouTube has ads.

Ads. ADS. ADSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!

Ahem. So purchasing Twitch grants YouTube even more opportunities to advertise and thus obtain revenue. But what else does the deal mean?

Well, on one hand, it provides Twitch with access to all of Google’s (recall the partnership YouTube and Google have) resources. Twitch could even work with Google to broaden and improve mobile game streaming.

The flip side revolves mostly around hypotheticals. If Twitch and YouTube made a decision most viewers and users disagreed with, there wouldn’t be another major site they could go to for refuge. And what are game publishers going to make of this change? Many people already know about the various instances of copyright infringement on YouTube. If successful, these could now apply to Twitch as well.

As a regular YouTube viewer, and an occasional Twitch one, I’m hardly going to abandon watching the two. I love both. And rather than worrying about the future, I choose to be optimistic about it and look forward to the engaging content YouTube and Twitch will undoubtedly continue bringing to us. No matter what else happens, after all, this is the Internet. There will always be videos.

After all, Twitch is not your father. YouTube is your father.