Twitch Brings Video Streaming to Echo Show

Twitch, the video streaming service famous for live casting video game playing that has more recently expanded into other live content, now has an Alexa skill compatible with Amazon Echo Show. Amazon purchased Twitch in 2014 for $970 million. The social video platform claims 100 million monthly active users and 15 million daily active users and 2.2 million broadcasters each month. A blog post by Twitch’s Ryan Balke comments:

The Twitch Skill lets you play your favorite channels, discover new streamers, get notified when your favorite channels start streaming, and get a reminder when your Twitch Prime subscription is available to use.

Twitch is No YouTube, But it Has Value for Echo Show

Amazon Echo Show is the Alexa device with a screen that integrates the voice and video experience. Until September, Echo Show users had access to YouTube, but that access has since been removed on two separate occasions. There are a number of Alexa skills such as Jeopardy and Food Network that have good implementations that support both audio and visual engagement. However, without YouTube, video consumption has been limited to Amazon Prime Video. Twitch provides another use for the screen. It also introduces live stream viewing to the device.

Twitch Fills a Video Gap on Echo Show

Echo Show is an important product line for Amazon because the screen-plus-voice-assistant combination is the only offering in the category today. In particular, it is valuable because Google doesn’t compete in the category and it adds video calling to Alexa’s repertoire in addition to video and image display. Twitch is a dark horse in the social video category compared to YouTube and Facebook, but it does give Amazon an asset to fill a current content gap on Echo Show. Plus, it may be an incentive for Twitch’s youth demographic to take advantage of the Echo Show discounts available right now.

The Twitch skill will also work in audio-only mode for other Echo devices according to the company. However, the live video streaming makes it an ideal skill for Echo Show.

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