SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Twitch, the world’s leading social video platform and community for gamers, today announced it’s experimenting with Social Eating, a new category for community interaction while eating. On Social Eating, broadcasters will be able to socialize with their viewers over their favorite meals, such as something they cooked on Twitch Creative or when taking a break from gaming. In Korea, the category name translates to CookRoom.
The impetus for Social Eating was driven by two converging trends surfaced by the Twitch community. The first is connected with Twitch’s South Korean users, where food consumption videos are a prevalent part of their culture and something many of Twitch’s Korean broadcasters have requested or attempted to integrate into their broadcasts. The second is the result of Twitch’s Creative category where broadcasters are allowed to demonstrate the cooking process, but spending expansive time on the eating aspect began to pull them outside the general parameters of what Creative is all about. Social Eating will exist as a single category among all the current game listings to enable the community to embrace this growing pastime.
“Twitch is a firm believer in letting the community’s interests dictate the direction of our platform's content,” said Raiford Cockfield, Director, APAC, Twitch. “In the case of Social Eating, we were getting a lot of demand from our Korean users given how this is a huge cultural phenomenon in their part of the world. We were also receiving feedback from our users who had embraced our platform's Creative category for cooking, but lamented they couldn't spend an equal amount of time eating what they prepared. While it is definitely a unique request, the Twitch community is nothing, if not unique, and we support their passion and interests.”
Historically, South Korea has been one of the most forward-thinking countries in terms of ushering in trends years before the rest of the world caught on. This spans everything from turning esports into a national sport with three TV channels dedicated to the genre, to millions of streamed K-Pop videos, and a booming mobile game developer hub. Eating-oriented broadcasts have been growing in popularity in South Korea since 2010 where mealtimes are a very social activity. With Korean eating videos attracting thousands of viewers and turning the hosts into celebrities, it has established itself as a legitimate form of entertainment.
To see what’s being served in the Social Eating category visit its directory.
About Twitch
Twitch is the world’s leading social video platform and community for gamers. Each month, more than 100 million community members gather to watch and talk about video games with more than 1.7 million broadcasters. Twitch’s video platform is the backbone of both live and on-demand distribution for the entire video game ecosystem. This includes game developers, publishers, media outlets, events, user generated content, and the entire esports scene. Twitch also features Twitch Creative, a category devoted to artists and the creative process. For more information about Twitch, visit the official website and blog.
