Twitch began as a side project — a gaming-only spinoff of a site where a man livestreamed his entire life, 24 hours a day.

2011

Justin.tv, launched in 2007, let founder Justin Kan broadcast everything he did through a camera worn on his head. As the site grew, its gaming broadcasts became far more popular than anything else on it, so in 2011 the team spun that audience off into a separate, gaming-focused service called Twitch. Twitch quickly eclipsed its parent; Justin.tv itself shut down in 2014, the same year Amazon bought Twitch for a reported $970 million.