In light of Ludwig’s move from Twitch to YouTube and the ongoing competition between the two platforms, popular streamer and OfflineTV member Pokimane commented on the biggest benefits of Twitch when compared to YouTube.
“I feel like because YouTube is clearly, primarily a VOD platform, streaming will always be a bit better on Twitch because Twitch is primarily a livestreaming platform,” Pokimane said. “When you specialize in something, you’re always going to be a little ahead at it.”
“And the other thing is like although people who are established can stream just fine on YouTube—and this is not considering like culture differences, chat differences, things like that which are individual to the person and what they prefer,” she said. “But aside from that, what I have yet to see on YouTube is them create enough of a community for a small streamer or someone up-and-coming to blow up on YouTube.”
As a platform, Twitch has plenty of features designed to help viewers find new steamers, including the front page, a recommended streamers section, and a plethora of external sites that promote streamer growth. Though YouTube has devoted resources to contracting already popular streamers with existing audiences, there have been relatively few new streamers organically growing on the YouTube Gaming platform.
“There’s no one actually coming up through the YouTube livestreaming platform in the same way people do on Twitch, just by networking, through LSF, or through anything else,” Pokimane said. “Anyways, that’s just my small take for now.”
While YouTube has seemingly relied on the large audiences of established, former Twitch streamers who switch platforms, it has yet to grow out discoverability features as extensive as Twitch’s.
