Pulled Quotes
“The lasting effects of 2020 irrevocably transformed SXSW.”
Texas Monthly journalist Dan Solomon, on the year that upended the conference
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“Your boy is currently in the middle of World War III right now.”
Daytrader Mike Babayan, an influencer in Dubai whose post contravened state-sanctioned social media propaganda
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“And so early last week … I set out to obtain the president’s number and call him.”
Semafor’s Max Tani, on the allure (and accessibility) of calling the President
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“Jeff Bezos called Matt Murray, the executive editor of The Washington Post, in late November to send an urgent message: Please do not quit.”
A New York Times triple byline, exploring how Bezos upended The Washington Post
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Quote/Unquote
Dan Clancey is the chief executive of the live-streaming platform Twitch, a platform whose most prominent creators have lately burst from the fringes of content creation into the center of mainstream conversation.
As I wrote about last month, the undeniable humanity of live-stream content has proven a newfound source of appeal as social media feeds increasingly fill with artificial content. Similarly, the predominance of video among social media platforms has made Twitch, whose live-streams produce a vast quantity of raw video materiel, a natural starting point for many creators whose end product is video-based anyway.
I spoke with Clancey at South by Southwest, where we discussed the relationship between Twitch and YouTube, the atomization of content creation, and why publishers have struggled with the format in the past.
This interview has been edited.
Mark Stenberg: Between TBPN, Breaking and Entering, Clavicular, iShowSpeed, and others, it feels like live-stream—not a new content format—is having a bit of a breakout moment. Why do you think that is?
Dan Clancey: I think social media has become anti-social. It’s user-generated media, but it lacks the social component that it once had. If the platforms used to connect people, now they just entertain them, and I think people are left wanting. They want a connection with a creator, with a community, and they get that with Twitch.
Mark: Publishers have experimented with live-streaming before—two years ago, I chronicled the misadventures of outlets like Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, and Vice on the platform. Do you think publishers belong on Twitch, and if so, what went wrong on those earlier efforts?
Dan: Two things work really well on Twitch. First is community: If you are not connecting with someone horizontally, why would you be there rather than just watch the content asynchronously? To get that, you have to be very specific in your focus, and a lot of publishers’ content was too heterogeneous. With Rolling Stone, no one is a fan of all genres of music, so different people tuned in for different artists and the community never took root. Second, people only want to be there in the moment if their participation affects the content. A concert is not influenced by you watching it. If you are going to adjust your schedule to accommodate a piece of content, your presence has to influence the content.
