Twitch credited the program for its ability to quickly take down the Buffalo video.

The metaverse may be far away, but video is here and now on social media—and consumer usage patterns are changing fast.

US TikTok users will spend more time with the social media platform this year than YouTube users will spend on YouTube. This difference will be just about a fraction of a minute but will expand in years to come.

Twitch was founded in 2011 as a spinoff of the Justin.tv livestreaming service. From its inception, Twitch focused on gaming streams and esports, which had been especially popular on Justin.tv. Amazon acquired Twitch in 2014 following a failed bid by YouTube to purchase the company. We estimate that Twitch will have 31.4 million US users in 2021, growing its base to 36.7 million by 2025.

Doug Scott, CMO of Twitch, speaks with eMarketer vice president of business development Marissa Coslov about the livestreaming platform’s user growth surge, the impact of popular programming beyond gaming, and building communities.

Video viewing platform Twitch is benefiting from coronavirus lockdowns in a big way in the US. Usage will jump 26.2% this year to 41.5 million, higher than the 37.5 million predicted in February.

The top 5 countries for Twitch installs

We forecast that 37.5 million people in the US will watch streaming video on Twitch at least monthly in 2020, meaning the video streaming platform will reach 15.5% of US digital video viewers this year. At its current pace, Twitch will surpass 40 million US users by the end of 2021, according to our first ever forecast for the platform.

Tipping comes to Clubhouse: The social audio app will now let users tip hosts, likely a play to keep creators on the platform as they’re in danger of being poached by bigger players like Twitter and Twitch.

About two-thirds of the US population are monthly connected TV (CTV) users. Young people are more likely to use CTV than older people. Four in 10 US senior citizens are CTV users—whereas CTV usage is about double that, more than 80%, among those ages 25 to 54.