The Wall Street Journal published an article this morning on Apple's content delivery infrastructure, and in the article an impressive statistic about our friends at Twitch.tv was revealed.
Accord to the article, which sources DeepField.com for its statistics, Twitch.tv accounts for 1.8% of United States peak internet traffic by companies and ranks fourth over all during peak hours. Netflix convincing leads the pack at 32%, Google sits in second at 22%, and Apple at third with 4.3%. Below Twitch.tv, a website and company that still isn't even three years old yet, are staples like Facebook, Pandora, and Tumblr.
DeepFields Co-Founder and CEO Craig Labovitz confirmed the data to onGamers, and says they will be releasing a report soon on Twitch and gaming overall.
"It's wonderful validation that Twitch is now officially playing in the big leagues. Apple, Hulu, Valve, Netflix, Amazon and the like are awesome company to keep", Twitch's VP of Marketing Matthew DiPietro told onGamers. "Of course this is something our engineers have known for some time, since they are actively scaling our infrastructure to meet the intense demand growth curve. We're laser-focused on that which is no small task!"
"We receive a significant amount of traffic from the major esports events and nobody really comes close to us in terms of audience size in that market, but it's the presence of the rest of the video game ecosystem, spanning casual gamers to developers, publishers, and media, that create the real magic. It's a safe to say Twitch is the central hub for the entire video game industry to share their passion for games."
In January Twitch released an extensive retrospective on their 2013 year including some featuring new monthly records in a variety of categories. This includes 12,000,000,000 minutes watched per month, over 45 million unique viewers per month, 900,000 broadcasters per month, and 6,000,000 total videos broadcast per month. 5,100 of those broadcasters are partners, and minutes watched and videos broadcast have doubled since 2012, with unique viewers up from 20 million in 2012. Twitch users watch on average 106 minutes of content per day.
68% of Twitch users have decreased watching TV to focus on their Online gaming entertainment and 58% of the 45 million unique monthly viewers spend more than 20 hours per week on Twitch. The average user on Twitch is 21-years old and spends their time in four main activities: 99% watch live streams, 61% chat with community, 38% watch video highlights, and 25% of users broadcast gameplay.
“When video game historians look back on gaming a decade from now, 2013 will be the year they cite as the tipping point of streaming,” said Matthew DiPietro Twitch's VP of Marketing at the time. “Every major event, publisher, developer, and media outlet in the gaming industry had a presence on Twitch, and streaming became an ever-present piece of the gaming experience. And it’s only going to get bigger."
League of Legends, Dota 2, and StarCraft 2 were the three most watched games on Twitch in 2013. League of Legends and Dota 2 are up 258% and 508%, respectively, in average monthly minutes watched compared to 2012.
Source: Wall Street Journal
