Twitch fires back at YouTube: video uploads incoming

After Google failed to acquire the streaming service Twitch it began to implement, update and release streaming features on the company's own YouTube video platform.

While YouTube is not there yet when it comes to streaming offers, the move while not completely unexpected should have raised concern at Twitch headquarters considering that Google runs some of the most popular Internet services and rarely fails to miss options to cross-promote its services.

Twitch held the official first TwitchCon yesterday and today in San Francisco and announced a list of massive changes coming to the platform in 2016.

Among them several features that puts Twitch in direct competition with YouTube in areas where YouTube is doing very well. This includes support for video uploads on Twitch which is without doubt the biggest of the announcements of the event's keynote.

What this means is that Twitch users can upload prerecorded videos to Twitch similarly to how videos are uploaded on YouTube currently.

This puts Twitch in direct competition with YouTube and while Twitch's content is limited to gaming, it is very likely that many content creators will upload their videos to Twitch and not only to YouTube once the feature becomes available.

While Google is busy adding streaming features to YouTube to compete with Twitch, Twitch is adding video upload and management features to its service to compete with YouTube on that level as well.

It will be interesting to see how this evolves over time. Will gamers move completely to Twitch or YouTube, or will they upload videos and do broadcasts on both services?

Other features of interest are options for broadcasters to create video playlists, a fully revamped conversations module and the ditching of Adobe Flash in favor of HTML5 video which will happen in 2016 on the platform.

You can watch a recording of the keynote by following this link.

Now You: What's your take on this? Does Twitch stand a chance against Google and YouTube when it comes to pre-recorded videos?