Julia Child to Inaugurate Popular Gaming Platform Twitch's New Cooking ChannelTwitch is the second streaming platform to get into the food space this month, a week after the launch of Steve Chen's Nom.
ByNina Zipkin•
Popular social live-streaming gaming platform Twitch is taking a page out of The Food Network's recipe book and today announced the launch ofa channel dedicated to cookingand baking. The channel is kicking off with a four-day marathon of the entire 201 episode run of Julia Child's beloved cooking showThe French Chef.
Twitch had previously streamed the entire run of Bob Ross'sThe Joy of Painting-- more than 400 episodes -- over the course of a week. Some 5.6 million viewers tuned in.
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Bill Morrier, head of Twitch Creative,explainedin a press release why beginning with Julia Child was a natural fit for the channel. "Julia Child was the precursor to Twitch's social cooking movement, makingThe French Chef显示一个伟大的对她是多么的富有远见的提醒。To put it in terms our community can relate to, Bob Ross is the Julia Child of painting."
Twitch isn't the only new video entrant in the food space. Just last week, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen and former YouTube engineering lead Vijay Karunamurthylaunchedan interactive streaming platform for foodies and chefs calledNom.
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And the trend isn't only relegated to cooking, but to eating as well. In South Korea, people can pull downas much as $10,000 a monththoughMukbang, where users live stream and chat with viewers during meals.
Twitch was founded in 2011 by CEO Emmett Shear and wasboughtby Amazon in 2014 for $970 million. As of 2015, the site boastedan average of 100 million monthly viewersaround the world. At the end of the year, the company reported that altogether, Twitch users had streamed 241,441,823,059 minutes, ormore than 459,000 years of video.