Pokimane Comments on Benefits of Twitch Compared To YouTube

In light of Ludwig’s move from Twitch to YouTube and the continuous competition between the two platforms, popular streamer and OfflineTV member Pokimane discussed Twitch’s major advantages over YouTube.

Here’s what she stated; “I feel like because YouTube is clearly, primarily a VOD platform, streaming will always be a bit better on Twitch because Twitch is primarily a live streaming platform. When you specialize in something, you’re always going to be a little ahead at it. And the other thing is like although people who are established can stream just fine on YouTube—and this is not considering cultural differences, chat differences, things like that which are individual to the person and what they prefer,” she said. “But aside from that, what I have yet to see on YouTube is them create enough of a community for a small streamer or someone up-and-coming to blow up on YouTube.”

Twitch includes a number of tools aimed at helping viewers discover new streamers, including a main page, a suggested streamers area, and a number of linked websites that support streamer growth. Despite YouTube’s efforts to hire established broadcasters with large followers, there have been few new streamers who have grown organically on the YouTube Gaming platform.

Pokimane added; “There’s no one actually coming up through the YouTube live streaming platform in the same way people do on Twitch, just by networking, through LSF, or through anything else. Anyways, that’s just my small take for now.”

While YouTube appears to have relied on the enormous viewership of former Twitch streamers switching platforms, it has yet to develop discoverability capabilities as strong as Twitch’s.