This morning Twitch, a live streaming service and community for gamers, announced that it more than doubled its audience in 2013, reaching 45 million unique viewers per month in the year, up from 20 million the year prior.
Twitch's growth has been sharp since its formation in 2011. Riding the rising popularity of eSports titles like League of Legends, Twitch has become the defacto streaming platform online for both casual, and professional gamers.
In a year-end report Twitch reported that its delivered viewing-minutes doubled in 2013 to 12 billion per month, and that three times the unique broadcasters produced video monthly in the year, up three times from 2012.
Twitch found a new home inside of the PlayStation 4 console, and will soon land in the Xbox One, perhaps helping the service continue to grow in the current year period. Though, to be frank, I've been unimpressed by the current per-channel viewership rates that PlayStation streamers have thus far engendered. TechCrunch will continue to monitor the numbers.
Rising in its mirror is Major League Gaming, which created a new platform for streaming video game content, which it claims is growing rapidly, and the success of which has pushed the company into operational profit.
In 2013 Twitch established that it was beholden to no single game, and that its audience was sticky. What it needs to prove this year is that it can replicate its past success and garner new fans among the ranks of console gamers.
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