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Twitch chief executive Dan Clancy said that in an attention economy, livestreaming formats like his platform foster a sense of human connection and authenticity that consumers can\u2019t get from social media channels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The CEO of the Amazon-owned company spoke at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen on Monday alongside Grant LaFontaine, chief executive of popular streaming marketplace Whatnot. Both executives emphasized that real-time connection is core to their business success. They also highlighted that the digital neighborhoods each has made contrast with highly addictive, quick-hit social media channels.<\/p>\n
\u201cSocial media has become antisocial. Sitting and swiping doesn\u2019t make you feel connected to other people,\u201d Twitch\u2019s Clancy said. \u201cIf you think of real-world communities\u2014churches, running clubs\u2014it all comes from shared experiences in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twitch and Whatnot have both amassed audiences of millions who view content for hours on the platforms. Twitch has an estimated 35 million daily active users. Whatnot has said it attracts several million daily active users. Whatnot has risen fast in recent years and challenged e-commerce giants like eBay. It had $8 billion in sales last year, with the company succeeding in collectible categories like trading cards and sports cards, but also in fast-growing verticals like women\u2019s fashion and sneakers. It ranks as one of the top shopping apps in Apple\u2019s App Store.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More from the 25th annual Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Anthropic\u2019s Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code, says there are days he manages tens of thousands of AI agents at once<\/em><\/p>\n Your career needs a \u2018gym membership\u2019 to keep up with continuous AI advancements, says Campus founder Tade Oyerinde<\/em><\/p>\n Answering a question about Twitch and Whatnot themselves becoming addictive platforms, Whatnot CEO LaFontaine said his company has aimed for long-term customer relationships over short-term exploitation. He also said Whatnot allows its users to set limits, though he did not specify what those limits are.<\/p>\n Both Twitch and Whatnot have struggled to turn hours of broadcasts into profitable businesses. Historically, most of Twitch\u2019s users have been men, and nearly three-quarters of them have been under 35, according to a 2024 report by investment bank Needham & Co.\u00a0<\/p>\n Clancy disputed the possibility of Amazon selling Twitch and said the streaming platform would likely not have grown as big as it did if it hadn\u2019t been for Amazon\u2019s 2014 purchase. He added that Amazon may not have fully understood what it was buying at the time, because Twitch\u2019s value is difficult to grasp for those who aren\u2019t active users of the platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n Clancy and LaFontaine said that the scraping of data on their platforms by AI labs has not been a major threat, and that AI avatars replacing their human creators isn\u2019t a problem they anticipate. LaFontaine said he expects AI to aid sellers in creating content or engaging with their followers during times when the sellers aren\u2019t streaming. Clancy said AI will allow Twitch\u2019s creators to \u201caccess their creativity\u201d by providing tools that make content creation easier.<\/p>\n \u201cAI is trying to take humans out of the equation, and live is one of the formats that keeps humans at the center,\u201d Clancy said. \u201cYou connect with people. You can understand them. You can see who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Twitch #CEO #Social #media #antisocial #match #shared #human #connection #livestreaming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Twitch chief executive Dan Clancy said that in an attention economy, livestreaming formats like his platform foster a sense of human connection and authenticity that consumers can\u2019t get from social… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[310,8781,3849,369,8783,4543,334,8784,4845,1082,8782,587,5734,5868,3701],"class_list":["post-6348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-amazon","tag-antisocial","tag-brainstorm-tech","tag-ceo","tag-connection","tag-e-commerce","tag-human","tag-livestreaming","tag-match","tag-media","tag-shared","tag-social","tag-streaming","tag-twitch","tag-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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