Chief Executive Officer, Twitch Interactive, Inc.
What Makes Twitch the Best Streaming Platfrom | Twitch CEO (Dan Clancy)
Most people think streaming is just about going live… but that’s not why platforms like Twitch win.
In this talk, Dan Clancy explains what actually makes live streaming different and why Twitch continues to dominate when it comes to building real audiences.
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From how streamers build loyal communities to why viewers stay for hours, this breakdown reveals the real reason creators are shifting toward live streaming and what most platforms still don’t understand.
If you’re a creator, this will change how you think about growth.
About Dan Clancy
Dan Clancy, CEO of Twitch, has continued hosting the company's "Let's Chat" podcast, interviewing streamers including JaharaJayde, Emilycc, TheSushiDragon, and JellyYT. In these conversations, Clancy discussed topics such as the Twitch Ambassador program, the challenges of long-duration streaming, and the importance of collaboration among creators. He stated that "collaboration is so foundational" to streaming and that "streamers have a lot of talent that they can go beyond their video game." Clancy also spoke about the role of luck, hard work, and raw talent in a creator's success. In a June 2026 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Clancy described Twitch as fostering a sense of belonging and community, contrasting it with what he called "antisocial" short-form social media. He said that "people really build communities on Twitch" and described the platform's subscription model as "patronage" rather than a paywall for content. Clancy also addressed creator safety compliance, collaboration with Amazon, and the evolving demographics of Twitch's audience, noting that the largest age group is now 25 to 34. He acknowledged challenges related to AI's impact on artists and creatives within the Twitch ecosystem.
Transcript (36 segments)
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Dan Clancy0:00
A lot of you are kind of familiar with Twitch, but some of you probably are not deeply familiar with Twitch. So, some of what I'm going to try to do today is just give you a sense of what is happening on Twitch, and what is unique and what has been happening in live streaming overall.
So, live streaming, in many ways, it's bigger than it's ever been. Live streaming started way back in 2007 with Justin.tv. And at that time, he called it life casting. And it's been around throughout social media, but really in the last year or so, it's sort of having this resurgence. And I want to talk some about why that is.
So, as humans, all of us yearn for connection with other human beings. There's this word community that we use a lot, but I actually think a lot of times, when we use the word community, we actually don't know what that means. And that's one thing that I'm going to talk about some in terms of what really gives that sense of belonging and that sense of community. And of course, social networking started as something that really helped connect you with other people and helped you feel connected with more people across the globe.
But in many ways today, social media is actually a little bit anti-social. Sitting and swiping on your phone, it doesn't connect you to other people. Sometimes it makes you feel a little more isolated and alone. And I think this is one of the reasons that live is sort of having a resurgence right now.
When someone's live, there's a true authenticity there where you know it's real. And people are yearning for that sense of reality and connection. So that they know, oh, this is a real person and it's not just about the person you're watching. It's also about the person that you're watching with. And I think this is one of the reasons that live is starting to have a resurgence. Cuz people are yearning for this connection and they're thinking, how can I be authentic and how can I authentically connect with my fans?
And one of the things that it does is it turns fans into a community. And that's really where Twitch, I think, has a unique difference. Because everyone does live streaming these days. I sometimes joke that I'm going to find out that McDonald's is starting a live streaming platform. Um cuz it seems like it's everywhere. Um but even with all these other people coming into live streaming, Twitch has remained the largest place for live streaming. And if you think of who are the live streaming stars, your list is always driven by people that started on Twitch and that are on Twitch.
And the reason for that is that Twitch is built to get you to pull up a chair and stay for a while. For our most loyal users, they will sit there and spend three, four hours a day, 25 days a month. And that time that they spend builds connections with each other.
So, when you watch live streaming on other platforms, you're just swiping and you're programmed to swipe to the next thing. That's what you do when you're watching everything else. And newsflash, sometimes live streaming gets a little boring, okay? Cuz you're just hanging out and doing all sorts of stuff. And when it gets a little boring, swipe. Okay? And if you're watching it on YouTube, you might look down to the bottom right and see some related videos. And I often joke and say there's like some candy down there that says, 'Hey, come check me out.' Next thing you know, you're clicking and you're off going somewhere else.
On Twitch, all we do is live streaming. And what ends up happening is community forms amongst the people watching. And as I said earlier, people talk about community all the time on social network. However, for me, the foundation of community is co-experiencing something together.
When you go back in time, community, of course, is foundational to us as human beings and how we've survived and lived in this world. But all of the real world communities we're a member of, all are around your church, your school, music, these other experiences where you are synchronously interacting with other people. And the foundation of a community is over time, you eventually build this bond. And it's tiny bit by tiny bit by tiny bit. So, to really have a sense of belonging, you need to invest the time. It doesn't just come by spending a little bit of time. And that's why on Twitch it's so different.
Because people are staying there for a long time. And that's the difference between having fans and having a community.
Now, Twitch started with gaming. And the interesting thing, it started with life casting. It wasn't gaming. And then when they switched to gaming, it sort of took off. And that's cuz gaming solved some of the problems that live streaming has, that as we've reached more scale, now I don't think those problems exist as much anymore.
So, first, gaming gave you something that you could do for a longer period of time. Cuz as I said, to build community, it takes time. Okay? We're all listening here. We're not going to form a community here. This won't be a community. Okay? First of all, we're going to be here for 20 minutes. Second of all, you two aren't... All these people aren't interacting with each other. Everyone's looking at me. What happens on Twitch when someone's live is chat's talking to each other. And after a while, they get to know each other. And when someone hasn't been there for a while and they show up, they're like, 'Hey, where you been?'
Now, I'm going to age myself a little here, but I sometimes refer to an old TV show, Cheers, which some people here may know. And there was a guy, Norm, and Cheers was a place where everybody knows your name. Okay? And you'd go into the bar and they'd go, 'Hey, Norm!' And we all yearn for that in our lives. We all yearn to go into a place where everyone knows your name and you feel connected. And so, gaming gave something that you could sit there and do for long periods of time. And that then built community.
And it also gave you stimulus, because a game gives you a lot of stimulus. And then you would react to that stimulus.
Now, what is interesting, when Twitch started, Twitch was dominated by what I will call our entertaining gamers. You go back in time, Ninja, Tim the Tatman, Sodapoppin. First and foremost, they're gamers, and they're very entertaining. If you look today, Twitch is much more entertainers that game. They don't all game. It's gone much bigger than gaming, but for the big ones, they do game some. But first and foremost, they're entertainers.
If you think of someone like Kai Cenat, he's a modern-day Kevin Hart. He's an entertaining person. And he's very authentic when he's out there. And when you think of many of our top streamers, you think of someone like CaseOh. Again, he games, but really the star of that is him, okay?
And that is also one of the key differences when it comes to Twitch. And as you're a creator, since I suspect there are many creators here that maybe have dabbled a little bit in live streaming, in general, live streaming isn't the platform where it's easy to grow your audience. That's cuz people are spending more time there. However, it's where you build an emotional connection with that audience.
So, right now I want everyone here to think for a second about somebody you like to watch on TikTok. And now suppose they stop making content for a week or two. Do you even know it? No. You don't. The emotional connection is with the platform. On Twitch, when people come and watch, they may watch five to 10 streamers in a week. When you watch TikTok, you're probably exposed to 2,000. YouTube, maybe 500. When you watch five to 10 people, you build that connection.
And now it's hard to build an audience that will spend that time with you. But once you build it, it's yours. Because now that emotional connection is not just swiping to the next creator and the next creator and the next creator. So, one way you have to think about... there's one thing about just looking at bigger and bigger numbers about how many people and how many thumbs up and how many likes and how many everything. But that misses the depth of the impact you're having on people.
And for those of you that are creators, many of you well obviously you love the fact that this is funding your life. But really what motivated you when you started was for people to listen. Right? And when you first started, you didn't have a gazillion followers. But you had something to say. And you loved that someone was listening to you. And when you're live, you get that direct feedback from them. You get that applause of the clouds. The emotes go up. The chat goes up. And that visceral feeling of making a difference in the world happens. Rather than just looking at a number and saying, 'Wow, I feel really good. I got so many thumbs up or likes or whatever.'
Um and so now Twitch has gone from gaming into all sorts of stuff. Okay? IRL and just chatting, huge part of Twitch now. And for just chatting, that's just a creator spending time with their community. And IRL, that's someone out in the world doing something in the real world and experiencing the world and their community is experiencing it with them.
So, this is Streamer University, which is Kai Cenat's one of his most recent things that he did. And he gathered a bunch of creators together and then he had the creators streaming the whole time. And so you had all these smaller communities watching it. The one thing I find interesting about here often times, and I think we'll see more next year and the next year. When you're at events like this, people streaming it so that everyone can be seeing it from different angles. And Streamer University was designed as a university to train streamers, but really the fun part was putting a lot of creative people together and see what entertaining stuff they did.
Okay, in music, music is being rethought of on Twitch. And it's not about people standing up and playing music. It's about musicians engaging with their audience and community. And they are actively creating music on Twitch, especially with hip-hop and rap. So, right now, Fred again, Septa, and Plaqueboymax are nominated for a Grammy of a song that they wrote while streaming. This is particularly happening with rap and hip-hop because it's an improvisational art form. And more and more you have those creators that are creating content on Twitch live.
So, this is in the studio. Plaqueboymax creates content regularly on Twitch with other creators.
We also see sports being rethought. In the end, sports is all about community. People mistakenly think that sports is about seeing the world's best acts play. No, it's all about saying, 'I'm a fan, you're a fan, it bonds us together.' And more and more creators now are taking that. And the thing on the right here, you see GP Explorer, where Squeezie had 90,000 people on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at an F4 race all done by creators. And that is all because of the affinity that those creators built with their community.
In Kings League, they're rethinking how soccer is done by having creators own teams and then having very good soccer players, but not the best soccer players, but you feel part of the action when you're watching.
Okay? And the other thing that's been happening a lot is more and more celebrities are saying I'm going to use Twitch as a secondary way of engaging with my community. So, as you sit here as a creator, don't be thinking, 'Oh, but live streaming takes a lot of time.' Think of it as how does this augment everything else that I do as a creator, okay?
Right here you have Stud Buds who did a 72-hour live stream. They're two WNBA basketball players and they streamed the All-Star game and you got to see a backstage look at what was happening during the All-Star game. Justin Bieber now is just streaming. He's doing a little bit of music, but mostly he's just exposing who he is. Okay? And engaging with his fans.
So, I want to talk... I want to end this by talking a little bit about where this is all going, okay? For you as a creator. So, first of all, don't think of or. Do I stream or do I do something else? Think of streaming as part of your creative expression. I'll tell you right now if you don't enjoy it, don't do it. Okay? If you're doing it to get somewhere, don't do it. Do it because it's fun. And think of it upstream of other content you create.
That's one reason why streaming took off in gaming is because the one thing every gaming creator had in common was to make a 20-minute video of them gaming, they had to game for four hours. And now they're like, 'What? I can have people hang out with me while I game? Then I can create my video and I can make money on the video. Shoot, I'll do that.' So, don't be thinking of it as something else I have to do. Think of it as something I'm already doing and I'm letting those people that are fans of me in to be part of the ride.
Okay? Um now, the other thing that I often tell um people that are thinking about, 'How do I use Twitch? What should I do? How do I do it?' A big part of it is collaboration. Okay? Find other interesting people and do interesting things together.
Another reason that gaming became so popular, gaming is inherently collaborative. Every time you game, you're actually co-creating. You're a bunch of creators here. It's fun to make content with other creators. Cuz you feel a connection. And you feel that connection not just with the creators, but with your audience that's watching.
Um now, the last thing I want to talk about a little bit is what's happening with AI, cuz of course that's written, if I'm going to get up here, of course I have to talk about AI. Um I do think one reason there's this interest in live streaming is cuz when something is just a short video or a picture, more and more you don't know if that's real, right? And more and more for you as a creator, you have to think, 'To what degree am I competing with AI?' Okay? When you're live, there is no way, I'm sorry, AI is not close to being able to replicate what you can do live. It's not close. It's a novelty. Okay?
AI helps you be more creative. It is an extension of you and it's a tool for you to think of what cool stuff can I do. The biggest challenge when you're live streaming is you need stimulus that you respond to. That you can be entertaining with. One way you get that stimulus is other people. Another way you can get that stimulus is to just use AI as a tool of your creative expression. And you can think of what are the things I want to create and how can I use other people and other tools to help me create?
So, to wrap up, personally I think the reason it is becoming so popular now is because more and more creators are looking for more of an authentic connection with their audience. And your audience is looking for a more authentic connection with you to know who you are, okay? And to get behind the scenes and to really feel part of your co-creation. So, as you think about your future and what you're going to do, think about how you can turn all of your fans into a community where their connection is with you. With that, thank you.