Livestreaming is having a moment—from Justin Bieber joining Twitch to YouTuber MrBeast’s mega-livestream last month.
Part of the renewed appeal of livestreaming is that people want more “authentic” social experiences instead of endlessly scrolling through algorithmic feeds, according to Twitch CEO Dan Clancy.
He argues Twitch works differently than other social apps by encouraging people to stay and interact with a streamer’s audience, which creates a sense of community that other platforms have had a hard time replicating. Simply commenting on videos doesn’t have the same effect, he said.
“I can't tell you the number of people who come up and tell me how they met their partner on Twitch,” he said on stage at the Scalable Summit on May 6. “How many people do you think met their partner by leaving comments on TikTok? Anyone? Personally, I think it's zero. ‘Wow. I really liked your comment. Want to get together sometime?’ I think that'd be a little creepy.”
The conversation also touched on the rise of paid clipping, which Clancy likened to a form of marketing. He doesn’t see it as similar to buying followers, though he acknowledged it can inflate perceptions of popularity in the same way.
Clancy also doesn’t expect Netflix’s exclusive podcasting push to extend to the rest of the creator economy. YouTube and Twitch battled for streamers in exclusive deals several years ago, but he said that ultimately limited the growth of livestreaming overall.
“We moved away from that. I did not feel like in the end that was healthy for the industry,” he said, saying restricting creators’ distribution ultimately hurts their cultural relevance and reach.
We dove into all of this and more with Clancy, who also called AI “overhyped” and gave his tips to other executives who want to be creators. (Clancy livestreams on Twitch under the handle DJ Clancy.)
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Scalable: Livestreaming feels like it's having a moment lately. We’re seeing more celebrities, from Kid Cudi to Justin Bieber, join Twitch. What do you think is driving the resurgence, and why now? Twitch has been around for 20 years.
Clancy: Social media started as actually being social. You caught up with your friends, you found out what they're doing. Social media is a little bit of a misnomer now. Social media, I hate to say it, can be a little anti-social, just sitting there and swiping. I'm not saying it's not fun, but it's not social.
I do think we yearn for that connection. Both creators and viewers want that sort of authentic, real connection. Just leaving a comment isn't really a connection. There's an authenticity with Twitch that drives people. For those people that it's right for, it's magical, that ability to connect with their audience.
But livestreaming is also really hard. Some of these top streamers, they're streaming for hours a day. When I think about how much time and energy goes into our one-hour podcast…How sustainable is livestreaming?
When you're doing your one-hour podcast, you're doing all this prep for it, right? It’s one hour, and you gotta pack it in. A lot of times livestreaming, you're hanging out talking. If you're talking with another person, there's a lot of stuff you can do. I do think in some ways because the bar is a little lower than the podcast—like the podcast, you gotta get that one hour where everything you say is good.
Whereas if you're livestreaming, as long as about half of what you say is good, that seems good enough. People are hanging out. It's more relaxed. It does vary in terms of how much time. I think early on, gaming streamers spend a fair amount of time. The foundation of Twitch is community.
We hear “community” a lot. So what does that mean?
A lot of people throw around the word "community.” I actually think they use it wrong.
If you think of real-world communities that you're a member of, whether it's a church, a sports group, it comes with shared experiences. That sense of connection and belonging, that is a human need, that comes over time, from spending time together. Just putting comments on a video—that's actually not a community.
The way I describe a community is a place where you feel a sense of belonging and acceptance. You don't feel a sense of belonging and acceptance by putting comments in a video.
You don’t think people feel that on TikTok?
Not at all.
Why?
I'll use this comparison. I can't tell you the number of people who come up and tell me how they met their partner on Twitch. How many people do you think met their partner by leaving comments on TikTok? Anyone? Personally, I think it's zero. ‘Wow. I really liked your comment. Want to get together sometime?’ I think that'd be a little creepy.
That comes from spending time together and with live, what's happening is—and this is the difference between Twitch and all the other livestreaming platforms—we design it so that people pull up a chair and stay for a while.
If you're on TikTok watching a livestream, you've been programmed to swipe. It's like you're sitting there and the app is going,’ come on, swipe, I’ve got something for you.’
Or I jokingly say, with YouTube, there's some candy in the bottom right. You're programmed whenever you're a little bored with what you're watching, your eye glances down to see what else might be there for me. Then you click, and you wander off.
Whereas on Twitch, that's the main event. When you stay there, people start to recognize each other's names. I stream regularly and the people who come to my stream, they know each other. They say, ‘Hey, how you been doing? Where’ve you been? What's going on?’ And so I think that that is the key thing that makes a difference. But it takes time to get that sense of belonging, that sense of connection.
We're going to switch gears a little bit. We're seeing Netflix sign podcasters to exclusive deals that pull their shows off of YouTube. This is something that Twitch and YouTube did years ago, as you battled for streamers. Is this era back of exclusivity deals, or do you feel like the industry has learned that they don't work?
In the creator space—which is different from the premium movie space—the content wants distribution. The content doesn't want to be restricted. Because what you're looking for is audience for your ideas. As soon as you restrict your distribution platforms, you restrict your audience.
Twitch did have this exclusivity with livestreaming. People came over, and [YouTube] tried to build their livestreaming by recruiting our top creators. We moved away from that. I did not feel like in the end that was healthy for the industry.
Why?
I think it limited growth of livestreaming, interestingly… AOL tried this years ago with YouTube. They took top YouTube stars and said, come and just post on AOL. What happened is their content wasn't on YouTube, so they became a little less relevant, a little less top of mind in people.
By sectioning off the space…When one creator leaves, it's like an ex-communication. I don't think that's the right thing long-term.
Now, you talked about Netflix. I do think sometimes you have businesses that will decide to drive exclusivity to grow their business. Netflix is doing that to get people coming over to watch podcasting. They will probably lose money on the deals they're doing. But in the end, if they get people using Netflix for podcasting, eventually they'll stop doing the exclusive deals.
You saw that with Spotify and [Joe] Rogan. They built their podcasting business. And then after a while, they said, ‘no, we're not gonna keep paying.’ And Rogan also said, ‘no, I want more distribution.’ You see where Rogan is today. Suppose Rogan was still exclusive on Spotify. He would not be as big as he is today.
Well, Spotify is still selling his ads for him.
But now he's everywhere right. This is a game of being top of mind. So personally, I feel like sometimes you might want to cash in and say, ‘I'll take the money for a little while.’ But I think if you're a creator, you want to be everywhere.
Clipping has become a big topic, especially creators paying armies of people to clip their content to try to make it go viral. How much clipping do you think creators should be doing, and should they be paying for it?
First of all, there are many types of creators, so you shouldn't equate them all together. There's podcasting, there's livestreaming. Clipping is different there.
When you create a podcast, there is this tension between, ‘Well, does this mean people don't have to come watch my podcast?’ Whereas when you create a clip of a livestream, well the livestream already happened. So it is: Something cool happened. I missed it. Maybe I need to show up so I'm there next time.
Clipping has always been a big part of livestreaming in different forms. When livestreaming started, it wasn't clipping then, but people would livestream, and then they'd create a 20-minute YouTube video. We've had clips on Twitch for 12 years, and they used to be shared on Reddit.
Clipping is a big part of Twitch, but that's different than the paid clipping. What you're talking about is the fact that now creators pay clippers to distribute their content. I think it's just another form of marketing.
Is it a good move for that creator? I'm sure for some creators the answer is yes and some creators no. Just like any marketing, if you market something that people don't like, it's not a good spend of money because they won't stay. They won't come back to see you. You won't build an affinity. You go back to the music business. If a musician is talented and they get marketed a lot, well then maybe they stay up there. So I think it varies by the creator.
Without a doubt, creators should be clipping content and sharing content [for free].
How much is too much?
Again, I think it's different. In livestreaming, I don't think there is too much.
In podcasting, I think you need to find a balance because you want to be getting people saying, oh, that's interesting. But if you give them so much, it's like, great, now I don't have to go watch that whole hour-long show. In podcasting, you want to have it as bait. You want to have it as a hook, but you don't want to give away the whole show.
On the paid clipping side, no doubt it's helped creators like Clavicular—we all know what looksmaxxing is—and a huge part of that is because he's paid armies of clippers. But do you think this distorts the true popularity of creators? Obviously a lot of them are super popular, but there have been headlines about, N3on spending more than a million dollars a month on clipping. Doesn't this kind of feel like buying followers?
I think it's different than buying followers. When you buy followers, those aren't real people.
When you're paying someone to clip, it's to get your content in front of a real person. Paying for clipping is a way to maybe get a legitimate follower because they look at it and say, ‘Oh, that's funny. I want to watch more of this guy.’ And they follow you because it's good.
Does it distort things? Of course. Marketing distorts things too.
Let’s take two movies being released: One movie studio puts a $50 million marketing budget behind [it]. The other studio puts a $3 million marketing budget. Which movie is going to get more viewers on the first weekend of release? The one with the $50 million marketing budget.
It skews the perceived popularity of the movie, but time always tells you what's good and what's not.
All of us know of blockbuster movies that had a big push and everyone talks about how shitty they were, even though they spent gazillions of dollars marketing them.
There will be all sorts of creators that are by the wayside five years from now if they don't create good content. They may have been a hit because they paid a lot for clips. And then they’ll say: Yeah, who was that guy?
Instagram head Adam Mossari posted a video recently about prioritizing original content. Do you feel like this is a move against these kinds of clipping armies?
Yeah, the thing that’s happening with clipping is of course there's always been this pay to get your content promoted on platforms. You can pay Spotify for them to promote your song. You can pay Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. That's been part of YouTube for god knows how long. Now clipping as opposed to paying the social media company to get my content in front of people…
As an ad. Like, if you amplify as an ad?
As a promoted post. In other words, there's ads and then there's promoted posts and it's saying, get this in front of more people. It's a native piece of content. Now people are paying these clip farms to get more people seeing their stuff.
I do think as soon as it starts impacting the bottom line for these companies, they'll start toning back. I think that's part of what you see with Instagram. Because the more you have these clip farms doing it, the less marketers need to go and pay to promote their content directly through the platforms.
So many creators and platforms from Instagram to individual creators have tried to diversify beyond advertising. Twitch is in a different boat where you've seen such success with paid subscriptions, but growing your advertising business has been a big priority. How is that going?
We make somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of our revenue directly from our viewers, not from advertising, which is unique. I often say that is a sign of the emotional connection that the viewers have with the creators.
Because they're paying to subscribe to that.
They're not paying to see the content. They're paying out of patronage.
I'll describe that quickly because some people may not know. One is a subscription, but it's not to get to the content; it's just for status. They have no ads when you watch, and really to be shown as supporting. The other thing that happens is people give these gift subscriptions where they basically are buying subscriptions for other members of the community, but the creator is still getting the money. It's a sign of emotional affinity with the creator.
Advertising ultimately is about emotional transference. You're trying to get people who are feeling good about the content. They see your ad, and so that positive feeling they have transfers to your brand. So that way when they have to make a decision, they say, ‘Where am I gonna go? Oh, I'll go to McDonald’s. I'll grab a Coke.’
The fact that they're so engaged with the creator, we think it performs very well in terms of activating brands so that you have that type of transference, even though it’s a UGC platform.
When I talk to brands, they don't understand Twitch to start sometimes, but once they get to know it, they find it very interesting and engaging. But the challenge is they aren't users of Twitch. And so it just takes time.
If two-thirds to three-fourths is coming from the viewer side, how much do you want advertising to be?
As opposed to thinking of it as a ratio, because of course, we're trying to grow both… I think there's a ton of opportunities still on the ad side in terms of us innovating different types of advertising. One thing we've been doing a lot is trying to create a greater ability to get scaled sponsorship. Lots of people are interested in influencer marketing. There's one thing about sticking your ad next to something. There's another thing about finding someone who really loves your product.
You used to pay people to act like real people loving your product. Well actually now you can get real people that actually love your product, talking about your product. So a lot of it is about us diversifying our advertising offering in addition to ads, but the ability to do more scaled influencer marketing.
Your parent company Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer and also has a booming advertising business. Can we expect to see more integrations? We've seen some, but especially with live shopping or affiliate.
We now have shopping in terms of ads. Of course there's Amazon Live, which is a live shopping experience. So there will definitely be more of that in time.
We have two minutes left. Do you think AI is overhyped or under hyped?
Of course it’s overhyped.
Which part?
There's a lot of doom and gloom. Bad things will happen because of AI, because bad things happen because of every technological innovation.
There will be problems with AI, however, we're not gonna solve them before they manifest themselves. It will have a big impact, but it's not gonna be this ‘Oh no, we disappear as human beings.’ That’s just people trying to get headlines.
You have a Twitch channel called DJ Clancy, where you livestream yourself playing music and singing. You have about 65,000 followers. Congrats! More executives are trying to become creators themselves these days. What advice do you have for them?
It only works if it's authentic. It becomes very natural for me. I've often said in a different life, if I were growing up today, maybe as opposed to going into computer science, maybe I would've been a creator.
So if it comes natural, then do it. If it's another job you have to do—anyone that's a creator knows that it doesn't come for free. If you just do it to put on a show, it won't have an impact because people will know you're putting on a show. But if it works, if you enjoy it, then I think it's a great experience.
