The rise of Twitch: Amazon, cord-cutting, and why it’s just like Kickstarter

With north of 100 million monthly users, Twitch is one of the biggest livestreaming portals in the world, and is perhaps best known for people broadcasting themselves playing video games to the global masses.

Speaking at the Guardian Changing Media Summit in London yesterday, Twitch CEO and cofounder Emmett Shear pointed to “democratization” as a key factor in his company’s success, and even drew parallels with the success of crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, which saw half a billion dollars worth of pledges in 2014 to help bring products to market. The two firms couldn’t be much more different though, so what are the similarities?