Amazon Is Going for Google's YouTube Base

Amazon Is Going for Google's YouTube Base

Bloomberg reports that Twitch is offering YouTube creators large sums of money to stream their videos on its platform instead. As a response, YouTube is offering to pay creators for not sharing their videos on other platforms.

Twitch is a site known for video streaming of games. It has a much smaller audience than YouTube, and therefore is seeking to enlarge their footprint. By doing so it will need to encroach on YouTube's turf. Some creators who have been contacted say Twitch is offering as much as a few million dollars a year, as well as a share of the future advertising sales and subscription revenue if they created content for them instead of for YouTube.

Gigi Gorgeous and actor, now vlogger and influencer, Will Smith, have been approached. Tanner Braungardt, a YouTuber who pranks people, has signed on to Twitch with more than 4 million YouTube subscribers.  

It's an interesting time fo online video. YouTube has been changing their algorithm which didn't favor some creators, and some videos weren't allowed to feature adverts, which is essentially one of the reasons for being a YouTuber in the first place. 

It's a start of what I think can be great competition for YouTube, and will surely be good for us, the creators and viewers of online video. It's going to take a while for me to switch over to another video provider, but I'm open to the idea, and if creators are better looked after, they'll produce even better content with larger budgets. 

Wouter du Toit's picture

Wouter is a portrait and street photographer based in Paris, France. He's originally from Cape Town, South Africa. He does image retouching for clients in the beauty and fashion industry and enjoys how technology makes new ways of photography possible.

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11 Comments

Aaaand the knives come out in full force. I'm on team Amazon because they deliver stuff to my door 2 days after I order it. :)

About time the content creatures get some more of the income. Last time I looked Google was making lots of money.

$1000 per 1 million views! Do the math, you have to get TONS of views to make any sort of sustainable income making content.

Very true.

I wonder if they'd still pay if the content were about the pay rates of Amazon's warehouse workers?

So does Amazon :-) Lots of money. And you're right William, their low level employees, especially in Europe, make very little.

Competition is a good thing. Especially if it means creators benefit from it.

Twitch is primarily for gamers right now, yes? I wonder if there's any plans in works to expand to other niches. Financially, seems like it'd be a smart business move.

It is primarily for gamers, but it does have a variety of other channels that are growing. Especially its "IRL."

Wouter du Toit shouldn't the headline read "Twitch is going..."

Realllllly needed this competition in the creative space. Good to see it happening

It's definitely interesting times. Twitch seems very orientated around live streaming. Which to me seems better suited for how-tos and live discussions. Although of course that's only how its being used now. Certainly, YouTube has become very difficult to gain benefits from and the monetisation hill is very steep now!