Dan, let's just start talking about your audience at Twitch. What are the demographics today and how has that evolved over the past few years?
Yeah, the interesting thing—everybody always thinks of Twitch as, oh, it's a younger audience, and it is a younger audience. We have a young audience, but interestingly, if I had to say what our range is that's the largest, it's actually 25 to 34 now. Because people have basically aged up.
How did that compare from like three years ago?
I think then it's probably three years younger.
Yeah, okay, so they're following you, got it.
And we still have a strong younger population, but it's sort of like when you go back in time—when Twitch first got popular, it probably was the 18 to 25, but we didn't have as many of them, and then they all aged up. But it really shocks me how many people of all ages I run into that are using Twitch. There's a woman at the Streamer Awards—she was a, I don't know, let's call her 50-something Black woman that makes puzzles, and that's what she streams. Right, and she got Newcomer of the Year, and she was wonderful. And so our audience is younger, but it's really surprising. It's not only young, if you will, and it tends to be more as you talk about younger—17, 18, 19. We're not a platform that focuses on the younger, not that there aren't some, but it's not like some of the other platforms where it's all 13, 14, and 15 year olds. So it's more kind of that 18 on up.
Other platforms—we'll get to that. I'm assuming primarily more male than female?
More male than female still, although that's continuing to change. I think you always have this historical factor.
Right, because we started as a gaming platform, and especially as you go back in time, more males gaming than females gaming. But now there are a lot more women gaming, there are a lot of women gamers, and now we've diversified from gaming. So it continues to change, but it's still more males.
Is it a focus? Are you actively trying to get more women?
It's not—I mean, we are conscious of diversifying our creator base and the content that's on Twitch, not so much from a viewer perspective.
We just want to continue to support a diverse range of voices on Twitch.
And so we try to support women streamers. And women streamers aren't always getting women viewers, but sometimes they do, and that's great.
So you worked at Google for years. How does that inform how you're running Twitch today?
So for those, I worked at Google for nine years. I ran a project called Google Book Search. I did a bunch in everything except web search—like search quality for everything else—and I was at YouTube for two years. And there's nothing magical. I mean part of it is, of course, I've been in the tech space, so I understand the space. I think being at YouTube for a few years really helps me. But there isn't some short pithy thing, because each place is just so different.
Was there something you saw that they did with creators that you're like, I'm doing differently?
I think it's not that I said I'm doing differently—it's because Twitch is just different.
Of course probably many of y'all are very familiar with YouTube and other platforms, and some may be familiar with Twitch, but the creator in many ways is more central on Twitch. When our viewers come to Twitch, they may watch—around maybe four to eight creators in a week. On YouTube, you'll see hundreds of creators in a week. So there's a more intimate connection. And the way I kind of describe it is, there's sort of this continuum. On one hand you have a platform like TikTok where you'll see thousands of creators in a week. And if there's somebody you watch on TikTok didn't create stuff for a week, you wouldn't notice it. YouTube then is in the middle, there's a little more of the creator, but it's really the platform, TikTok, right? YouTube, it's the platform, but also the creator a little bit. And Twitch is on the other end, where it's really the creator that is the star. That's who people have a creator they love, they're coming to see. Half of our traffic is people direct navigating to their channels.
This is the creator I wanna spend time with.
Because I'm part of this community, and that's why I'm coming. And so we create a space. There's this very subtle difference if you're not a techie, but when you're live streaming on Twitch, you live stream on the creator's channel.
That's their channel. Okay, and when they get you there, it's designed so that you stay there. And that's what builds the community experience. Years ago when I was at YouTube, it used to be that you could watch videos on a creator's channel back in 2010. And when we launched YouTube Live, it was on the creator's channel, and then we took it off, so that you were always watching on what's called the Watch Page, where you have related videos. So on that platform, they're always showing you other stuff, right? To always get you to go somewhere else, where on Twitch, once a creator gets you to their channel, we keep 'em on that creator's channel until they decide to leave. And that's what makes Twitch kind of different. And that's what's right for Twitch, 'cause we focus on live streaming.
So I kind of hear the answer to my next question. So I'm gonna ask it a little differently.
I'll give you a different answer anyway.
I appreciate that. I'll ask a different question. So I mean, I just talked to a creator who was like, 'YouTube is my home.' How do you compete with that?
So really the issue is all of our creators use YouTube. Really what they're saying is, they mostly like creating edited content versus live content.
And the reality is both work in different ways. And for some people, once they go live, they're like, 'Oh my gosh, this is amazing.' And there are lots of YouTube creators that create edited videos and then they start going live—we have a number of 'em coming—and they're like, 'Wow, I love it.' 'Cause there's this immediacy, and I'll use this analogy, everybody here, imagine that you are a musician, okay? And think of the difference between recording an album and putting out an album and doing a live performance. There's a wonderful part about crafting a song and putting out an album, but then when everyone's listening to it, you only know it because you look at Spotify and go, 'Oh, I have 1,000 listens,' or I have whatever. Which viscerally is not the same as being in an audience where you do a song and everyone applauds and you feel like, oh, I really affected them. Or for you being here versus writing an article, right? There's something about seeing people nod. He's nodding his head, right? And when you're live streaming, people are nodding their head, but by putting stuff in chat, by putting their emotes, and biologically we're designed to feel good about that. And so I think it's just—for some people, live is great for them. And then if you're talking about live, Twitch is—all the live stars are on Twitch. But for some people, they prefer editing a video, and that's great for them. That's just what's right for them.
What about the audience? I mean you have TikTok, you have YouTube. How do you get people away from these, like how do you compete with them? I mean they're everywhere. My kids are on them all the time. No judgment please.
Right, so obviously we're in an attention economy.
And people often think of us, 'cause we have this moniker social media, and they have a moniker social media, so they think we're competing with them. But really we're just all competing for people's time and attention. And it may be Netflix, or Prime Video, or it may be YouTube, or it may be reading a book, or it may be going for a run. We have to do something that engages you. And really what we offer is actually quite different. A phrase I say all the time, and every time I say it, everybody looks up and says, 'Yeah.' Social media is actually antisocial now. Sitting and swiping doesn't make you feel connected. That's not where social media started. It started with, 'Oh, I'm hearing from my aunt that I haven't heard or whatever.' But now you're sitting and swiping, and it's a little isolating. Okay, Twitch—people throw around this word community, I don't think they always use it appropriately. People really build communities on Twitch. As I look around, I'll use an analogy that folks here might get—it's like 'Cheers,' a place where everybody knows your name. And so it's actually quite different. Now, the reality is, people like short-form swiping, okay, but they also need connection and community. And so I think we offer something that's actually quite different than the other social media platforms.
Just speaking as a parent, I'm gonna ask this question then—is it less addictive then?
Yeah, I think the interesting thing—I'm a parent of a 28-year-old and 24-year-old, and I was very, when they were younger, minimized how much they were using phones and whatnot. And I'll use this other analogy, which is, 'cause there's been a lot of attention to social media, especially with teens right now. And a lot of it is because it's sort of isolating, and you're just sitting there by yourself. In the book that started a lot—Jonathan Haidt's book, 'The Anxious Generation'—he talked about how he expected to find the same thing with young boys in gaming, but he didn't find the evidence as clear. And I think the thing that he didn't realize is that, when I looked at this with my son, I myself am not a gamer, surprisingly. My son gamed to hang out with his friends. And if you have a son and you're like, 'Why are they gaming?' They're hanging out with their friends, and that's what they're doing. And that has this countervailing force. Yes, sometimes they're online too much, it'd be better if they're hanging out with their friends playing baseball in the park. But that's not for everyone. It's not always available. And Twitch is the same way—it's not actually, you may spend a fair amount of time, but you're not by yourself, sitting and swiping, and evaluating yourself against these images that you see. You are hanging out and talking to other people, which makes you not feel so isolated.
So is Twitch good for our kids?
So the phrase 'good'—it's always relative. If you're asking me as a parent, I want my kids out in the sand, and rivers, and streams, and doing all sorts of stuff. But we live in a different world in terms of having other kids that your kids can play with. Every summer I used to have this idea of taking a week where my kids would not be in any organized activity, and I'd get all their friends together, and I had this idea of just let 'em play, where we'd just organize my son and all their friends to go to a park, and they would play pickup baseball or basketball. There were never enough kids in the neighborhood to do it. Right, so that's this challenge. Okay, now this is when he was 10 or 11. So I do think that interacting with other people can be healthy, but as I said, our sweet spot tends not to be the 13, 14, and 15 year olds. Right, our sweet spot tends much more to be as they get a little bit older, and a little more comfortable in terms of 17, 18, 19.
Yeah, interesting. Let's talk about the business. So you are owned by Amazon. How much interaction do you have with the other parts of the Amazon business? It feels pretty separate.
Yeah, they've been great. I mean they're a great supporter. They still let us sort of maintain our own identity and do our own thing. And in that sense they haven't tried to deeply integrate us in various points of collaboration. We work with Prime Video a lot. Amazon Music has a channel on Twitch that they invest heavily in. Audible's doing some stuff with 'Harry Potter.' But in the end we still have a fairly unique identity as Twitch.
Are there areas where you feel there's more opportunity to kind of do more together?
There almost always are areas, in particular, I think, with Prime Video.
More and more you're seeing this convergence of what I'll call highly produced narrative content and creator content. And podcasting, which is really a creator artifact as opposed to a highly produced narrative show—and you see these platforms more and more thinking, 'Oh, we need to have more content that is not just the highly produced narrative shows.'
And so I think there are various areas. I think that there's still lots of interesting ideas that integrate some type of recurring narrative VOD with a live experience.
Let's talk about—so how are you doing in terms of ad revenue compared to subscription revenue?
Yeah, so that scenario—most people don't realize that a little more than two thirds of our money has come from our viewers.
