So it has been recently reported that for the past couple of months the "Just Chatting" category is getting the most watch time vs other directory slots on Twitch.
Here is a fresh look at some of the metrics on that from streamelements:
- Just Chatting
- Hours Watched 86 million
- Jan 2020
- Hours Watched 167 million
- June 2020
- Hours Watched 86 million
- League of Legends
- Hours Watched 94 million
- Jan 2020
- Hours Watched 135 million
- June 2020
- Hours Watched 94 million
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Hours Watched 41 million
- Jan 2020
- Hours Watched 96 million
- June 2020
- Hours Watched 41 million
- Fortnite
- Hours Watched 47 million
- Jan 2020
- Hours Watched 95 million
- June 2020
- Hours Watched 47 million
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
- Hours Watched 7 million
- Jan 2020
- Hours Watched 76 million
- June 2020
- Hours Watched 7 million
What exactly is happening in this directory to yield such growth vs the other gaming categories?
From my point of view is pretty simple, some streamers are purposely mis-categorizing their channels to be in "Just Chatting" vs the more correct category because it has more floating viewership and bigger potential to attract audience.
Here is a clip of Hikaru a popular chess streamer making a comment about another popular chess streamer and how it effects chess directory.
Back in 2018, Twitch created new tags & categories to better enable IRL channels to self categorizes and tag into more proper niches. Twitch's community guidelines state the following:
"Content Labeling
You are expected to accurately label your content to the best of your ability. When choosing a category or tag, please choose whichever best describes your content. Deliberate or extensive misuse of titles, tags, games/categories, or other metadata are prohibited." - source
Content mis-labeling is happening on mass, and is even being promoted by big influencers on Twitch as a way to gain more viewers.
This is a big problem, only getting worse as time goes on. Now the question is if Twitch is going to make any changes or start to enforce their community guidelines.
