Recently I have switched from Twitch over to Facebook Gaming. This came as a big surprise to my audience and I apologies for the little heads up BUT I believe Facebook Gaming has something really special to offer that Twitch simply cannot compete with.
The Difference Between Facebook Gaming & Twitch
Facebook Gaming is very new to the streaming world and Twitch, well we all know how long Twitch has been around. For this reason Twitch’s market share is significantly higher than Facebook’s. Twitch has been around for years and has proven to everyone that live streaming is here to stay and is becoming more popular than ever before. With this year’s pandemic live streaming in general has skyrocketed. People working from home are watching live streams on the side and a lot of people who have lost their jobs, have turned towards live streaming to supplement their financial situation.
Twitch, the largest streaming platform of all and owned by Amazon, is hosting almost every ESports event and if you think streamer, you are most likely thinking about Twitch.
While Facebook Gaming is, out of the top three platforms, the smallest streaming platform, Facebook servers the largest audience there is. Facebook has over 2.7 billion active accounts every single month and with their Gaming service so closely integrated into the platform, all 2.7 billion accounts have live streams at their fingertips. Facebook Gaming might seem like a small platform right now, but with this audience their streaming service is set up for success.
Why Facebook Gaming And Not Twitch
Don’t get me wrong, Twitch is not a bad platform to stream on and to grow your brand. It is in my opinion the easiest and most difficult platform to grow on at the same time. Twitch has been around for years, and there is countless data and strategies on how to grow a Twitch stream. Every single streamer knows exactly what needs to be done in order to make it on Twitch, and yet 9/10 of those streamers choose NOT to follow the path and go against everything that will help them grow.
If you want to grow a Twitch channel, the fastest way is to grow a channel and an audience somewhere else on a platform that allows for Discoverability and then you bring that audience over to Twitch.
Facebook Gaming works entirely differently. With the platform being so new, there is not that much data out there on how to grow on Facebook Gaming. There has simply not been enough time to exactly figure out what works and what does not work. Besides that, Facebook also pushes their live streams onto users that do not even know what a live stream is. Facebook actively suggests live streams based on your interests. You might have experienced that yourself. When you scroll through your Facebook feed, often Facebook will throw a video, or now a live stream, into your feed that the algorithm believes you will enjoy. And this is the major leg up that Facebook has on Twitch. Facebook is utilizing their 2.7 billion monthly users to grow their own streaming platform while Twitch is resting on their high market share.
Facebook Gaming will not take over or run Twitch out of business anytime soon, but I strongly believe that Facebook’s discoverability will sway a lot of streamers to switch to Facebook, grow them and with that grow the platform.
The big difference is that when people go onto Twitch, they visit Twitch with a streamer already in mind that they want to watch. If that streamer is not online, they will go down their watchlist and if no one in their watchlist is currently streaming that user will leave the platform.
On Facebook it works exactly the other way around. Users open up the Facebook app often because they have some downtime and are bored. They then scroll through Facebook and if they see a video or a live stream they stick around and if they really enjoy it they will come back to it!
I have switched over for exactly those reasons from Twitch to Facebook Gaming. For me it is extremely interesting and a big part of streaming, figuring out myself how to grow and reach more people. If you enjoyed this article let me know down in the comments below. I hope this gave you a better understanding of the differences between Facebook Gaming and Twitch.
