A Man, a Van, a Plan: Twitch CEO Seeks to Charm Angry Streamers
In recent years, as Twitch fended off territorial incursions from YouTube, the livestreaming service did whatever it could to hang on to top performers: signing them to exorbitant, exclusive contracts, offering them favorable cuts of subscription revenue and even handing out free tickets to the Super Bowl. Now under mounting pressure from its owner Amazon.com Inc. to cut costs, the company's new chief executive officer is testing out a less expensive way of strengthening its bond with the creative community — a cross-country, listening tour.
Since taking over in March, Dan Clancy, the platform's new guitar-playing, folk-music-loving CEO, has been traveling around the US in a van, meeting with prominent celebrity streamers and lending an ear to their ideas and concerns.
Along the way, Clancy has gotten together with gamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and his wife at a Florida steakhouse. He has checked out rapper T-Pain's elaborate PC setup at his Georgia mansion. On his personal Twitch account, he has livestreamed Bob Seger-infused jam sessions with influencers from the front seat of his van. And he has visited streamer Maya Higa's animal sanctuary in Austin where he posed for photos alongside an emu.
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“He asked a lot of questions about how it works, and how we use Twitch,” Higa said. “It feels like he wants to know everybody as a person, not just what their content is.”
The resulting feedback has been invaluable, Clancy said in a recent interview at TwitchCon, the annual convention in Las Vegas, even if he doesn't take any particular streamer's advice wholesale.
“It's all input,” Clancy said. “So many people understand a problem. It doesn't mean they understand the solution.”
Clancy,
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