Twitch Streaming Infrastructure Evolution

A story about how Twitch developed specialized streaming technology over 10 years and the potential to spin it out as a business.

"Twitch is 10 years into the business and they invented essentially the best in class live video streaming at scale. You can have 100,000 people all watching one channel with low latency and it doesn't fall over, broadcasting around the world. Nobody else really had that problem, so nobody else built a solution.

You could imagine Twitch could make this available to others and spin it out as its own business unit. That might be a good decision because you're taking an asset you already have that's refined, battle tested, and brandable. Your sales pitch is 'we use this for the biggest live streaming network out there.'

But at the same time, it's a distraction. They wouldn't have done it year 1, 2, or 3. They could do it at year 10 because their core is stable, it's not going anywhere, it's not going to die."