If you're ditching cable, there are many alternative content destinations online. If you're a gamer, one of those is probably TwitchTV.

TwitchTV was started in June 2011 by Justin.tv founders Justin Kan and Emmett Shear. Since launch, TwitchTV has built an audience of 16 million visitors per month, with a growth rate of about 11% per month, according to Kan. Not only that, but those on the site stay and watch for an average of 47 minutes.

What are they watching? Usually, live broadcasts of gamers playing Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, or competitive esports like StarCraft 2, Halo and Street Fighter X Tekken.

Kan compares the rise in e-sport popularity to the rise of poker 20 years ago. While poker was a game many had enjoyed at home for years, the advent of cameras that could display the players' hands to the television audience turned it into a spectator sport. Similarly, gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry, and now the technology is allowing people to stream their own content and spectate more easily.

"Poker started to be shown on ESPN. We are the ESPN of e-sports," Kan said.

“Don't wait for someone to represent you. Start your own stream and get involved."

TwitchTV differs from ESPN in that anyone with the right tools can stream their own content. Marcus Graham, better known as djWHEAT, has been streaming games to spectators for the last 10 years. He said TwitchTV has seen a rise in the number people of streaming games, from double-digits to an individual streamer with thousands of watchers. Not only that, he says gamers are learning they can make money from their streams — sometimes enough to supplant a full-time job.

TwitchTV helps users monetize by allowing them to place ads in their streams. Kan said the advertising system was unique because streamers could place as many ads as they wanted in places that made sense with the content.

"I'm excited to be the ultimate level of tech entrepreneur. I set my own schedule and create my own content," Graham said. "Now so many other people realize they can do this, too."

Graham said TwitchTV is working on tools that will make it even easier for gamers to share their content, and he hopes that the next-generation consoles will feature tools making it easier to stream games. It's not only about the tools though; gamers running streams have to learn how to entertain, engage and capture a loyal audience.

TwitchTV offers its streamers tools to interact with their audience, most importantly a chat that runs on the right side of their stream. It's the main way for the streaming audience to interact with what's being broadcast, and with each other. Graham said people come into his chats to talk to each other as well as to be entertained. He also sees people drop in even if he's not broadcasting just to chat about games.

He also said some popular content creators are allowing their TwitchTV subscribers to play matches against them on the stream.

"It'd be like if you were a huge basketball fan and got to play a game against Michael Jordan."

Jared Rea, the community manager for TwitchTV, said interactions the players and audience have with each other are what allow the community to grow as a whole, even as they host such a varied amount of game content.

"Almost like San Francisco's culture and community varies from block to block, TwitchTV's community varies wildly," said Rea. "All the jokes in the fighting community are very different than the Minecraft community. But if you hang around, you'll start to see a lot of familiar faces across communities."

Rea's job at TwitchTV, along with a whole community team, is to address and balance all the needs of this microcosm, as well as to surface the best content from each of them to feature on the main site.

"There's a big push and pull sometimes between the casual and hardcore gamers, but at the end of the day I try to know as much about everything. I fight for the users," said Rea, who is also a former game journalist and has been involved with the gaming culture for years.

TwitchTV's explosive growth can be attributed to the strong community and the democratization of content creation — it gives gamers a place to belong, said Rea. He said the common gamer mentality has always felt a little out of the mainstream.

"Don't wait for someone to represent you. Start your own stream and get involved," he said.

The user empowerment has helped TwitchTV expand rapidly. Graham called the growth "astronomical," and he doesn't think it will be long before TwitchTV becomes more mainstream.

"I don't even have to hope too hard in some cases," he said. "The numbers are attracting eyeballs that weren't looking at us before."

Some of those eyeballs are big commercial advertisers, said Kan. He said more brands than before are sponsoring shows and players, and there is an emergence of big networks like Major League Gaming.

Even with the rapid growth, Rea said those interested in becoming part of the TwitchTV community will find it welcoming.