Youtube Vs. Twitch
Youtube and Twitch are the 2 most popular platforms to make videos and livestream on. At first glance these two sites may not seem very different, but rest assured they are. As different as Youtube is from Twitch, they are also similar in several ways. In this paper you will see the many differences and similarities for Youtube and Twitch.
The differences first. Firstly, and primarily, Youtube is more popular than Twitch, with more users active and more people watching and subscribing to channels on Youtube than on twitch. For example, the most followed streamer on Twitch is Ninja, with about 15 million followers. Now look at Youtube, where the most subscribed to channel is T-series, with about 150 million subscribers. That is 10 times as many followers as Ninja has on twitch! Another way they're different is Youtube has primarily videos, while Twitch specializes in livestreams. You can find a good amount of livestreams on Youtube, just not nearly as many as on Twitch, just like you can find edited videos on Twitch, but that isn't what Twitch users use Twitch for. Speaking of livestreams, the whole livestream system on Twitch is completely different from the way Youtube does it. The way one donates on Twitch is via Bits, which you buy for real money, and you can apparently get for free by watching ads. One Bit donated is one cent to the streamer. Now, Bits are priced in a way that helps Twitch make a profit, as buying 100 bits cost $1.40, and buying 5,000 bits cost $64.40. On Youtube, donating comes in two forms: the Super Sticker, and the Super Chat. The Super Sticker allows you to chose an animated photo by Google, for a price of like, $2. The $uper Chat lets you donate any amount of money to highlight your chat message, and the more you donate, the more your message stands out and the longer it gets pinned to the top of the screen. The final difference I will talk about here, as I don't want this paper to be too long, are the Twitch teams, which Youtube doesn't have. Basically how twitch teams work is you can join a team that plays a certain game in a certain way, like a celeste speedrunning team, or a SMM2 team that plays multiplayer versus, or a team that does challenge runs for Mario games. This is something solely limited to twitch, although there are some Youtube owned channels like Youtube Gaming, Youtube Music, and Youtube Creators, though these are just channels, not groups where people of the same intrests can congregate. There are many more small, niche things I could list about the differences between these two companies, but for the sake of keeping this paper's length under several pages, I will leave you to speculate what those differences could be.
Just as these two streaming platforms have many differences, they are also the same in many ways. They are both streaming platforms, for instance. They both have stupid copyright rules. I honestly think it's ok if someone has a copyright on their music, which they worked hard on. It's fine if my ad revenue I would be getting goes to those wonderful creators who worked hard on their music. What I'm NOT ok with is if someone tries to take down my video because of copyrighted music! This hasn't happened to me personally, (at the time of writing I can only make unlisted videos anyways,) but if I want to support a music creator by using their copyrighted music and giving my ad revenue to them and crediting them in the description of my video so they get more popular, and then they take down my video, that's not cool! It's not even just music either! Up until recently, Nintendo has been copyright claiming every video that uses footage of their game! That's honestly really bad for buisness, because you are essentially telling your fans they aren't allowed to play their games on camera, so they're just like, "ok boomer," and then they lose millions of dollars. Do you get what I'm saying? I could go on forever about B.S. copyright ****, but this essay should probably be under 5 pages for conveniece, plus I just realized this part of the essay is more about Nintendo's bad buisness decisions and how dumb Youtube/Twitch's copyright system is than how they are really the same. I'll just start up again on how YT/Tch are they same. They both give their users money for doing stuff they love. I could make an Undertale remix, or play fortnite, or speedrun celeste, as long as I am monetized, I can get money for playing Minecraft. Of course, it's not as simple as that. You need to interact with your fans, whether you just talk to them during livestreams, play Among Us with them, play their Mario Maker level, or give away a $25 Amazon gift card to 1-3 lucky fans. Another way they are the same is that gaming plays a huge part in both sites. Twitch may specialize in gaming more than Youtube, but it is still a big part in both companies's success. A final way they are similar (that I can think of) is that everyone with a decent amount of followers/subs are really good at what they do. The Golden Age for a Youtuber is probably between 100K subs and 3M subs. Much less and the videos (usually, probably, if they aren't a music creator,) won't be very high qualitly, and much more and the Youtuber will get more energetic to the point where it's cringy. There are some exceptions to this rule, like most music channels can be really good, even if they have just 100 subs, or 12M subs. Pewdiepie is another rulebreaker here, with about 107M subs, he isn't cringy. (I think, I haven't looked into it.)
As you may have noticed by now, the differences between these two platforms are endless. I could have talked about how the icons are different, and Youtube seems to like red, while Twitch likes blue better, but since those are so small and unimportant, I decided to spare you those details. Of course, the more things are different, the more things stay the same. I could have said you can find very popular videos on both, but that would be boring. I hope you learned something from reading this paper about two rivaling social media companies.