

In late 2013, particularly due to increasing viewership, Twitch had issues with lag and low frame rates in Europe.

Twitch made up 1.8% of total US Internet traffic during peak periods. By February 2014, Twitch was the fourth largest source of Internet traffic during peak times in the United States, behind Netflix, Google, and Apple. As of mid-2013, there were over 43 million viewers on Twitch monthly, with the average viewer watching an hour and a half a day.


Competing video services, such as YouTube and Dailymotion, began to increase the prominence of their gaming content to compete, but have had a much smaller impact so far. : 40Įspecially since the shutdown of its direct competitor in early 2013, Twitch has become the most popular e-sports streaming service by a large margin, leading some to conclude that the website has a "near monopoly on the market". : 40 In addition to the influx of venture funding, it was believed in 2013 that the company had become profitable. Investors during three rounds of fund raising leading up to the end of 2013 included Draper Associates, Bessemer Venture Partners and Thrive Capital. Twitch has been supported by significant investments of venture capital, with US$15 million in 2012 (on top of US$7 million originally raised for ), and US$20 million in 2013. The company was headquartered in San Francisco's Financial District. Twitch had about 80 employees in June 2013, which increased to 100 by December 2013. Since then, Twitch has attracted more than 35 million unique visitors a month. It launched officially in public beta on June 6, 2011. In June 2011, : 40 the company decided to spin off the gaming content as TwitchTV, inspired by the term twitch gameplay. The gaming category grew especially fast, and became the most popular content on the site. When was launched in 2007 by Justin Kan and Emmett Shear, the site was divided into several content categories. History Founding and initial growth (2007–2013)
