An event or moment · 2011 · Live
Justin.tv becomes Twitch
Streaming gets a category, a vocabulary, a schedule, and a professional class of people who stream full time.
The first platform to treat a live one-sided relationship as a category worth designing for deliberately rather than tolerating incidentally.
Application. One-sided attachment put to work on purpose. Creator economies, community, fandom as infrastructure, and the things that genuinely help people. Not automatically good - a tool with an obvious use is a tool that will also get a bad one.
Same story, 4 other entries
YouTube launches2005 → The subscription tier2015 → Replika2017 → The platform executive and the creator, same stage2026
Where it sits
2010 2010+ · 2011 2026
Provenance · 5 source record(s)
- retrievableTwitch launched 6 June 2011 as a spin-off of Justin.tv's gaming section, named for 'twitch gameplay', in public betaTwitch (service). Wikipedia, citing contemporary coverage. ↗
- retrievableThe founder's own account of how a parasocial bond was accidentally engineered: an audio idea became a 24/7 camera feed following one person, then chat, then a community around watchingKan, J. (2011). Why Starting Justin.tv Was A Really Bad Idea, But I'm Glad We Did It Anyway. TechCrunch (guest post). ↗
- retrievableJustin.tv began as Justin Kan broadcasting his life 24/7 from a cap-mounted camera at midnight on 19 March 2007 - the first and most parasocial thing on the platformJustin.tv. Wikipedia. ↗
- retrievableIntimacy turned to intrusion almost immediately: viewers swatted Kan and sent large delivery orders to his apartmentJustin.tv. Wikipedia, citing AllThingsD coverage of the TwitchTV launch. ↗
- retrievableContemporary launch coverage, 6 June 2011, E3 unveilingDuryee, T. (2011). Justin.tv Broadcasts Gamers' Every Move on TwitchTV. AllThingsD. ↗
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