TwitchCon will draw thousands of people to San Jose, California.
TwitchCon 2019 drew thousands of people to San Jose, California.
Categories

Marcus Graham: Looking back on 10 years of Twitch’s experiment with livestreaming

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 14 min

Twitch has generated more than 67 billion hours of livestream viewership since 2011, or enough for every person on Earth to watch over 8 hours of video each. And one of the people who has been there for most of the time is Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham, the head of creator development at Twitch.

Graham’s job is to build programs that amplify and invest in the creators at Twitch. He has been at Twitch since near the beginning, as he was employee No. 19. And he has watched Twitch grow through the years, beyond the $970 million Amazon acquisition in 2014 and into the heady days of 2021. I talked to him about the evolution of Twitch, particularly as it changed from Justin.tv to the immense platform is it now when game livestreaming took off.

Unlock premium content and VIP community perks with GB M A X! Join now to enjoy our free and premium perks. 

Join now →

Sign in to your account.

Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.