Twitchcon 2024: Twitch is Nothing Without Its Community

I spent this weekend at Twitchcon 2024 in San Diego, and one thing was made apparent above all else: The Twitch community drives the platform forward. With a keynote from Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, a long sit-down with Head of Community Mary Kish, and chats with other company executives and successful streamers, one thing was consistent throughout: They truly care about their community and want to see it thrive.

When it comes to streaming and content creation, I have often asked myself, “Why Twitch?” Once upon a time, when I was an aspiring streamer, I was successful (ish) on Mixer , only to lose that following and be forced to make the switch to Twitch. I remember streaming to one or two viewers — and yes, my mom was one of them — for weeks, only leaving me feeling discouraged. Options at the time were limited, and I didn’t want to start over a third time, so I gave up.

Discoverability is what I hear the most complaints about on Twitch. They never push small streamers to the front; no one will ever see you. While that still feels true, after attending Twitchcon 2024, I realized that it is because “discoverability” isn’t what Twitch relies on to help streamers succeed. Community is everything, and you need to be a part of that to push yourself forward.

We received plenty of tips on how to use your community and the platform to become a more recognized streamer, and Head of Community Mary Kish—who is a streamer herself with more than 20 thousand followers — had some things to say about how a streamer’s viewers help build their platform,

“Twitch is all about engaging with community, and so the most interesting moments actually happen when a community member does something and the streamer reacts to it. You’ll see that a lot with any streamer who’s getting 50 gifted, and they’re freaking out because they just got this awesome opportunity or that they make a mistake and chat says like you made a big mistake and they’re making fun of them.”

Kish went on to note how viewers can guide the overall vibe of a stream, “Chat can control, chat can gift, chat can giveth and chat can taketh away.” We also heard a lot about how the community, both streamers and viewers, determine trends and propel the platform to more than just a place for people to play and watch video games,

“Some people probably wouldn’t think of Netflix as a competitor, but anywhere you are spending your personal time and enjoying when you’re not working is competition for your precious time. The way that Twitch is so unique in that way is that you’re not actually watching entertainment; you’re a part of it. You’re involved, you can actually dynamically change it, you can influence it, you were there.”

Cosplay streamer Stella Chu (StellaChuu on socials) has over 35k followers on Twitch , another 608k on TikTok and 243k on YouTube . She talked to us at Twitchcon about what her community means to her as a performer and how they make her feel, “I love my community. They’re so nice to me…I feel really blessed that everyone’s just always cool and chill, and they get it. They never misunderstand me. They just get me. I feel seen on the internet all the time.”

Chu touched on something that Chief Marketing Officer Rachel Delphin talked to us about, too, how the platform gives streamers and views a place to take up space both online and at events like Twitchcon, “It’s just a great place to connect. I would argue that our product is community, right? The thing that we create is that sense of belonging, that sense of community that is so universal. And so, IRL is a really good addition to all the community building that happens online every day. And it’s a lot of fun!”

Not only is building a community how streamers will succeed on Twitch, but it is also how Twitch will succeed as a platform. During the Twitchcon 2024 opening ceremony , Dan Clancy got on stage to address concerns from the community directly. He even acknowledged how unhappy they were with the new app, and usually, that is something a CEO would dance around. Kish commented on Clancy’s participation with the community, how unique his interactions are and why that is vital to the platform’s success,

“Dan Clancy, our CEO, is a huge advocate of increasing communication and transparency. What does that mean? That means that when we make a decision, we really should be going live so that the chat can see the decisions that we’re making and ask us questions live that our executives have to answer. They should be able to do that, right? They made the decisions. They should be able to do that.”

She also discussed how Clancy wants to tackle issues head-on, “We’re on Twitch; we should be using Twitch. It’s kind of not that crazy, right? So, using Twitch and letting people talk to us and hear our answers in real-time. They’re not scripted. Dan answers those questions. It’s really surreal that even when they write spicy questions, Dan is like, ‘I’ll answer that. I don’t care.’ And so he’s kind of all for it, and so am I. It’s neat to watch him essentially say, ‘If you’re mad, I want to hear why. If you’re confused, I want to fix it.'”

During that same keynote, Clancy discussed better integrations with TikTok and YouTube. You would think platform exclusivity would be preferred, but the platform has come to benefit from the people its streamers bring in from other platforms. Delphine explained how streamers use multiple platforms:

“It’s really great for the creator and ultimately great for Twitch. I would say probably universally that Twitch creators, even if Twitch is their primary service where they make their content, all of them are using services to promote their content, promote their channel, and keep their community updated and connected. And so the more we can do to help make that much easier, the better for them and, first and foremost and also for Twitch.”

Delphin also touched on how important the community is in driving trends and even how they dictate what events and meetups go on at events like Twitchcon or other promotional events throughout the year: “We know we’re big communities. We know there are new big communities, so that will feed into our decisions like what kind of community meetups we should do. We get a lot of community feedback, too, so that is relatively easy for us to incorporate.”

“Twitch doesn’t rely on algorithms and luck to gain followers and stay successful. It relies on the people streaming and the communities it creates.”

She also described how community feedback helps shape future events after something like Twitchcon, “After something like this, we’re like, ‘Hey, is there something we overlooked? Is there a community that we didn’t feel was present?’ We can absolutely, we’ll very quickly in the next time try to incorporate those kinds of requests. And then we do a call for content. So a lot of the content that is produced is hosted by creators themselves. And so that is also very helpful in guiding our direction in terms of what’s trending, what is the community wanting to talk about, gives us a really good set of insights.”

Coming away from Twitchcon 2024, I learned a lot about how the platform works for their community.  Twitch doesn’t rely on algorithms and luck to gain followers and stay successful. It relies on the people streaming and the communities it creates. Twitch is a place where its community dictates the trends and how the platform grows, and Twitchcon 2024 made that all the more evident.