Gaming seems to be the next big thing for major tech companies. After years of dominating the game streaming industry, Twitch was joined by none other than Google in the space as their YouTube Division announced and later launched YouTube Gaming to be Twitch’s competitor. Now, Twitter apparently wants to focus more on video games, and has hired on ex-YouTube executive Rodrigo Velloso to be at the helm of its new division that will take aim at the sector. What’s more is that Velloso had previously been heading up all of YouTube’s gaming content when working for the company, which makes him a prime choice for the job to take on games at Twitter.
Velloso’s main role will not be too unlike some of what he was responsible for at YouTube, as he’ll be looking to create partnerships with content creators, streamers, gaming publishers, gaming event coordinators, game developers and more. Although this wasn’t the only task for Velloso at YouTube, he is already familiar with the role so it makes sense for him to do the same thing for Twitter. While companies like YouTube and Twitch are more focused on providing users and streamers with a platform to upload their content to, Twitter’s role in the gaming community will be more about helping anyone and everyone use social media tools like Twitter Video and SnappyTV to “promote” content on social media.
Gamers are social people, with 82 percent of them using their smartphones to ineract with social media in some way as mentioned in a study by Lifecourse last year . This makes Velloso perfect for Twitter in that he can help to foster relationships which engage and nruture that social attitude. In 2015 alone video games are expected to be a $92 Billion industry, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before companies like Twitter attempted to tap into it. Twitter is also easily accessible by gamers on consoles like the PS4, which gives them a way to snap quick photos using the “share” button and upload them to Twitter to share with their followers. Although Twitter doesn’t seem likely to develop a streaming platform of their own, they will still be very much involved with game streaming through the social aspects of promoting content.