Twitch Began as a Blurry Reality Show Following One Man Around
There was one channel, the picture was fuzzy, and games appeared only when the people who lived there played them.
Y Combinator · Michael Seibel - How to Plan an MVPTwitch began as Justin.tv, a round-the-clock online reality show that followed one man, cofounder Justin Kan.
There was only one channel. One founder recalled that visitors watched Kan live his life or they left, since no other viewing option existed.
The picture was fuzzy. One founder recalled being asked whether viewers could read secret documents in the apartment, and answering that viewers could barely recognize faces, let alone documents.
Video games were rare at first, showing up only when the people who lived there played them.
Questions people ask
Who was Justin, and how did the show work?
Justin Kan wore a camera attached to his head that streamed what he was doing all day. The project started in 2007 with cofounders Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt, and the always on life stream was a way to test live video over the internet.
How did a life stream turn into a game streaming site?
After several months, the team opened Justin.tv so anyone could broadcast live. Video game players became some of the most popular and loyal broadcasters, and that category grew so fast that the company spun it off as Twitch in 2011.
What happened to Justin.tv?
Amazon bought Twitch in 2014 for about $970 million in cash. Justin.tv closed that same year, while Twitch kept growing into one of the largest live video services.