A lot of their rise has come because they just literally will create hundreds of clips from a single stream, often posting them while the stream is still live. As live streaming becomes an increasingly dominant form of entertainment, Twitch is at a crossroads. On one hand, the platform is an undeniable powerhouse in the live streaming space. It has evolved from a primarily desktop streaming platform to a mobile streaming app that facilitates hours of just chatting and IRL streams. Soon, you'll even be able to stream to Twitch via Meta's AI Ray-Ban smart glasses. But not everything is rosy. The platform has struggled to effectively monetize. Monthly usage has fallen off since 2020 peaks, and it's facing increased competition from TikTok Live and YouTube. The culture on Twitch has also been called toxic and hostile for women creators. Dan Clancy is the CEO of Twitch, and it's his job to navigate these choppy waters. He sat down with me this weekend at TwitchCon to discuss how Twitch is evolving, its broader role in the creator economy over the next 10 years, increased competition from Hollywood, and how he thinks about balancing streamers' creative freedom with safety concerns. Here's our interview. Dan, thanks so much for chatting with me.
Great to meet you. Also, huge thank you to Stream Elements for setting all of this up because I could not get it set up myself.
First of all, I want to ask you, how would you define Twitch's mission in 2025?
I think our mission in 2025 is more relevant than ever and it fits, you know, as we talk about creating belonging through our streamers and the communities they create. I often talk about how in many ways social media has become antisocial. Sitting and swiping in your phone doesn't connect you to people. And I think that's one reason why we've seen this enthusiasm around Twitch because I think people more than ever are looking for authentic connections with both other people but also with the people, you know, in this creator economy. There's a distance when you're just watching something on, you know, a short form platform and there's an authenticity that, you know, you can't hide when you stream. And so I think it's really going to the roots of what has made the foundation of Twitch, which is really community.
I feel like every app has been entering the live streaming space lately. I mean, obviously TikTok's been investing so heavily in live. We've got Substack Live now. Even we're also seeing a lot more multistreaming, right, which is, you know, sort of becoming more of a thing. How do you think Twitch differentiates itself in this like increasingly crowded live streaming market?
Now, now this whole everybody building a live streaming, it's actually been happening actually for quite some time. You know, there was a period when YouTube, part of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft were all coming after Twitch. They were all doing big contracts to recruit our top streamers, and Twitch stayed on top. Mixer shut down. Facebook just sunsetted their live streaming, Facebook Live. It's still a valuable part of YouTube, and as you said, TikTok's doing it now. But I think the reason we were able to stay where we were during that period is the same reason why now I actually think it's good for us. Twitch is a community-centric live streaming app and we focus on live streaming and it's really important that the way you get a sense of community is that shared experience together and that requires people to pull up and share and stay for a while. If you're watching live streaming on one of the other platforms, if you take TikTok, you watch it, you've been programmed that if you get a little bored, your mind just says, 'Come on, swipe. Let's see what's next.' If you're watching a YouTube video live and you get a little bored, your eyes glance to the bottom right. I was joking once with Tepin. I said, 'You know who your big competition is on YouTube? It's this guy named Tain. He makes really good VODs and someone's watching you live and your eye just drifts.' Because again, you're programmed whenever you're watching a video when you're watching VODs to look to the bottom right. And so then you don't get that sense of community. And so I always say if if people are just every now and then dabbling, it's like use whatever platform. But if you want to build a community that like is is really there for you, then do it on Twitch. And once you build a community, it's yours. Because the affinity on Twitch is with the creator, not the platform. If I asked you, who are your top five TikTok creators? You'd have a glazed look over your face because you wouldn't be able to think of five that are your top five. If you ask any Twitch fan, who are your top five Twitch streamers? They'll give you the answer right away because the affinity is with the creator. And so, we feel really good. And I think other people being in this space exposes more people to live streaming, both from a viewer side and from a creator side. So, I think it just helps us.
I feel like, I mean, part of what you're talking about, TikTok and YouTube though, is the discovery aspect and those platforms have succeeded so successfully in discovery. What are you doing from a Twitch standpoint in terms of boosting discovery? Are you leaning into more algorithmic recommendations? Like what are you doing to ensure that new streamers can find their audiences and build that community?
Yeah. So, part of this is so many platforms they just look at themselves when they view the world and it just makes no sense. You need to think of yourself in a broader ecosystem and don't just stare at yourself. And everybody wants to say, 'Well, I want everybody to do everything on my app.' That's not what the user wants. So, we absolutely are focusing on things for discovery on our app. But the difference you're talking about is more a difference of short form versus long form. And short form content, if you know, on TikTok, you might see 2,000 creators in a week.
On YouTube, you might see 500. On Twitch, you might see 10. And so the thing that creates the community on Twitch, the fact that you stay on the live stream in a long form experience is the thing that makes discovery hard. So we absolutely are investing in helping people create clips, but we're very clear we don't want to, you know, be a short form content. We are a live platform. That's why you get community. So, we're investing for our platform, but a big part is also getting people to take their content from cool stuff that happens on Twitch, post it on other platforms, because you want your content to find your audience. And that's no different if you create a podcast, right? And you distribute your podcast through various different platforms, but then you create shorts that you'll put on TikTok because that's how you are finding your audience, not just new viewers. That's also how you stay top of mind with your existing viewers.
You talked about the kind of the unique bond that people have and I've seen it so much firsthand of like this very deep parasocial bond I would say with Twitch streamers really specifically I think that reaches a level that doesn't even happen on platforms like YouTube and others. Obviously we saw one Twitch streamer yesterday, Emiru, get assaulted by a male fan and a lot of streamers have, especially female streamers, have talked about, you know, the danger that they feel from these sort of toxic, I guess, parasocial kind of creeps. What are you guys doing to prioritize safety? Because I know also a bunch of Twitch content creators said that they were too scared to even come to TwitchCon this year just in case something like what happened yesterday would happen.
Yeah. So the safety of our creators is a top priority. The challenge we face is a challenge in today's society. It's not limited to Twitch. It extends throughout our society. I do think that when you're live streaming in many ways since you control your community and you can ban people, you can, you know, make it so that those people that you don't want engaging with you and participating with you aren't there. You know, when I use other short form content and people say all sorts of stuff, well, I can't stop that. But when I live stream, they basically don't bother me. Now, what happened yesterday obviously was something that we care deeply about securing this environment. You know, we're looking very closely at everything that happened there and I care deeply about Emmy. She's a friend of mine and so I want to see how we can support her to do that. But this is just something we have to keep working on. And I think everyone identifies our tools in terms of trust and safety as the leaders in the industry about helping creators, but that means there's always more work to be done because that's the world we live in now.
Demi had posted earlier today that I guess this fan was allowed to cross multiple barriers at TwitchCon. Why should I guess streamers trust Twitch to keep them safe at TwitchCon? Because I feel like simultaneously this has been such a secure event to the point that even, like, journalists have had struggle, like, you know, it is very secure but, you know, here's this man that just walks up and is somehow able to bypass all these things so why should they trust the platform when slip-ups or, you know, issues like this have happened?
Right, well, I mean, as you know, I think you're toward some of what we do in terms of security. The reality is even as you do a lot in terms of security in today's world there are challenges that can present themselves especially when someone is putting themselves out there. And so, you know, we try to work very closely with each creator about what they want to do and what works for them. So, I don't want to get into any, you know, specifics or details, but part of that is working with creators and, you know, trying to find, and right now we're definitely, you know, ramping it up to make sure creators know that we have the resources there to help them figure out what's right for them.
We've also seen this record assault on free speech by the Trump administration and efforts to increasingly target online speech, obviously targeting platforms like yours. What are you doing to protect freedom of expression on the internet?
The good news is so far I think we already were in a slightly different place. You know, we have a set of community guidelines that focus not on what you say, but how you say it. And we're very serious about trying to figure out how to apply those consistently across. And so far, we have not had any challenges in terms of the areas you're talking about. I think that's in part because, you know, we've always been sort of balanced in terms of that. And I think there's something about live that makes it, you know, less prone to some of the challenges that happen on other platforms.
They tried to, they for some reason involved you guys in the Charlie Kirk thing, wanted to haul you in front of Congress. I think that that hearing is sort of indefinitely postponed. But are you doing anything to sort of proactively ensure that you can sort of protect the people on your platform from government pressures around speech?
Yeah. The interesting thing is as you talk about proactively doing it, the biggest thing is you have to be able, you need to be ready to respond when there's a challenge. So we are, if that happens again, it hasn't happened. I think people express a wide range of views on the platform and there hasn't been a big issue there but we're ready if something does, you know, challenges.
Why do you think that you guys got dragged into that when it wasn't, it was like sort of following the Charlie Kirk shooting. There didn't seem to be any connection.
We didn't have, there's no connection. I think it's purely what I'll call company association. They need some number of N people. If you did a cluster of companies that, you know, end up having users that overlap and you had Reddit and Discord and Steam and you say tell me the fourth company and you can't mention one of the big ones because you have to have balance. You can't mention X or Facebook or YouTube. Then it's like, well, what's the fourth? So it's proximity. I don't think, to me, I'm not that worried about it because I think, you know, he had no experience. We do not have this problem of radicalization on Twitch. It's a public forum. We don't have these private groups. One way to think of it is if you really view this from an honest and sincere perspective. These things are trying to get information. And to be honest, they probably don't know that much about Twitch.
Right. They're not Twitch users. So, I feel really good that we have, in terms of them trying to understand this landscape, they'll realize, oh, Twitch doesn't really fit with these other ones.
Yeah. I mean, I feel like we're talking about a group of lawmakers that probably don't know how to turn their computers on, so I don't know how familiar they are with Twitch. I mean, it seems like a lot of people in Congress are certainly familiar with figures like Hassan who was brought up at the mayoral debate for some god knows reason why. And I'm curious, like, when you look at top talent and also efforts to deplatform top talent, especially not just from the government, but these really intense pressure campaigns that come from sort of like other big voices online, even the media to deplatform, censor people. How do you guys navigate that as a platform? And what do you do to ensure that big creators can continue to remain on Twitch? Because we've seen other platforms cave to public pressure to deplatform their own creators.
Right, right, right. I think a big part of it is having a clear north star. Like you need to understand what your policy is and what you think is right and then you need to be willing to just consistently apply it. The reality is in today's social media world, no matter what you do, there will be those people who want to attack you in some way so you can't make decisions to avoid any type of, you know, backlash from some vocal group. No matter what decision you make, you're going to have that. So given that, you can't do it by trying to avoid or ban or whatever. You just have to say, okay, what do we think is right for our platform? And then just stick to your guns and over time that's going to make sure you can continue what you're doing because as you say it's important for our creators to feel like we're going to consistently apply these things.
