Twitch CEO on the Future of the Creator Economy - and the Challenge to Keep the Platform Safe

0:01This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once.

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2:30ADDY IGNATIUS, The New World of Work

2:43Emmett Shear:Hi, welcome to Harvard Business Review's The New World of Work. I'm Adi Ignatius, Editor-in-Chief of HBR, and thank you for being with us. We are pre-taping the show for scheduling reasons. So as you're watching this live, We won't be able to take questions from the audience, but we did get some questions for our guests who I'll introduce in a second from our Instagram followers beforehand. So anyway, glad you're with us. This is, like I say, it's taped, not live, but this will be a great interview. We have a great guest who I will introduce in one second. But first, let's hear from our friends at Unisys.

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3:34Emmett Shear:All right, so this is our last show of the season. So New World of Work, we've been going, I guess, for 12 episodes. And we're going to take a break after this episode and then probably come back in the fall. But you'll be hearing more from us later. But we have a great guest today, and that is Emmett Scheer, who is the CEO of Twitch, who most of you know is the fast-growing streaming service for gaming, for sports, for entertainment. It was purchased for nearly a billion dollars eight years ago by Amazon. Emmett is also a part-time partner for the startup Accelerator Y Combinator. So, Emmett, welcome to the show.

4:12Emmett Shear:Thank you for having me. Okay. So, you know, I really want to talk to you about Twitch, what, you know, how Twitch sort of represents the evolution of the economy. I want to get into all that in a second. But before we start, I think it would be odd not to talk about the tragedy in Buffalo, you know, the murder spree. the perpetrator, you know, was initially trying to live stream on Twitch. And that has brought out criticism that comes up from time to time about whether platforms are responsible for the content that's on them. So, you know, before we get into it, I, you know, I'd love to give you a chance just to address that and what, you know, what your thoughts are on all that.

4:52Yeah. You know, obviously a horrific hate crime. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think, you know a browser. But Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web. Like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block. Or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments.

5:27It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. And that kind of violence, that kind of hate, white supremacy, racism don't have any place, I mean, really anywhere in our society or especially on Twitch. And we're working, of course, with law enforcement and taking every action we can find to respond to the tragedy.

6:11And we're going to continue to invest heavily in ensuring the safety of everyone on Twitch. I think this is an example of one of those places where we've done a lot of work, but there's obviously still work to be done. All right.

6:31Emmett Shear:I appreciate your addressing that. And obviously, this is a tough time for all of us. But let's get into it. And really, in some of your comments right there, it points to the fact the world is changing. And there are platforms like Twitch that are are playing new roles in the economy and, and, uh, and in how we think about business. So, you know, your, your, you know, your, your talent, uh, they tend to be creators. They're not employees. You know, I'd love to see how with your front row into sort of this aspect of the economy, you know, how do you see this evolving and the creator economy that you're posting?

7:10Emmett Shear:How do you see that evolving? Yeah. Um, One of the things about the creator economy that I think is most interesting from the point of view of streamers is the degree to which being a creator is a career path independent of any one company. Almost every creator these days is on multiple bits of social media. They're on every service. And they may pick one that's their primary service. one place they are most likely to go to. But they don't like, they're not, they're not, it's like a traditional job where you would, you would have an employer and they would, that employer would choose the ratio of your usage.

7:55Instead, there's a bunch of different places you can spend your time, different ways you can connect with your audience, different ways you can monetize, so you can grow your audience. And you pick the balance. And so we're kind of always in competition with every other service. trying to win the time effectively of the creator and convince them that we're the best place they should be spending their time. We offer the best combination of reach, of positive interaction with their community, of monetization. And that's a very different dynamic than a regular job.

8:33Emmett Shear:So at so-called regular companies, we think a lot about culture and we think that develop and sustain a culture you sort of need employees who are committed to you and committed to the long term and you're you're skilling them up and mentoring them and giving them reasons to be there you know do you think about culture differently so uh i actually there's a question i asked an employee one time who asked me a question about culture this is many years ago we were first getting started 12 years ago 13 years ago um and they asked me you know what do you think our culture is? And I ask them, well, what do you mean by culture?

9:13And they give me the best answer to that question, something that I've kept as my answer to the question ever since, which is, oh, well, your culture is the set of behaviors that you reward and the set of behaviors that you punish. If there's a set of behaviors that get you positive reinforcement, you'll get more of those behaviors in your company. And if there's a set of behaviors that you react negatively to, you'll get less of that. And over time, that is your culture because that's culture is what we do, but people ultimately are, you know, rewarded by what, what causes success. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome.

9:55You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once.

10:28So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier. So you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. And what avoids failure? And I would add a new onset actually. My addition to that is it's actually the set of behaviors that people perceive are punished or perceive are rewarded. Because if in fact you're rewarded for doing one thing, but everyone believes you're rewarded for doing something else, they follow what they think they're rewarded for, not what they actually are and always.

11:12So occasionally a little gap opens up there. But so what's our responsibility as a service? Well, it's pretty different from a full-time employer, right? As a full-time employer, we get all of your time. We can dictate your working hours. We can dictate all kinds of things as an employer. For a streamer, they choose how many hours they do. They choose when they do it. And they choose what content they want to do. We have very little control compared to the normal thing. And yet, there's a certain set of things we can reward and a certain set of things that we can punish. And so our culture is the combination of what causes your stream to grow, what causes your monetization to go up, what causes you to get discovered on Twitch, how does our discovery work.

12:00We choose which streams go through the recommendation engine, and therefore whatever we choose is the way that what tends to get promoted, that is the set of stuff that you'll tend to get more of. And then obviously, if you act out of line, if you say something racist or hateful, if you say something that is abusive towards other streamers, we'll punish that. And so those set of tools are sort of how we manage creating a culture for streamers. But actually, I would say that that's almost just the baseline. Because really, a lot of the culture from streamers comes from the other streamers. a lot of the reward people get is from other people saying, wow, that was cool.

12:45And so there's this whole second layer of culture that's been created by our streamers themselves. And that's sort of traditional for Twitch, actually. We might provide the baseline, but ultimately almost everything gets done by our streamers. And so I'd say that's really our culture varies a lot by game. This fighting game culture is very different from League of Legends culture.

13:09Emmett Shear:So, you know, all that sounds maybe somewhat unique to what you are, to a kind of a streaming platform. But do you think more traditional companies can learn from that? I mean, do you think there's a shift happening where not just in streaming, but creators have the power or gig workers have the power or something like that that we all need to reckon with? Yeah. So I think bringing up gig workers is a really good place to look at, because I think gig workers are an incredible contrast to the creator economy. I don't know if there's a formal definition for both of them, but for me, the difference is the gig economy is commodified labor working for the API.

13:55So your job is reactive to the computer dispatch, computerized dispatch from jobs, which is similar to working for a creator economy company like Twitch, but where creators are differentiated, uncommodified labor. People care which creator they connect to. You can't just substitute one creator for another. uh people the the consumers don't view it as the same gig economy labor is commodified you don't really care who delivers the food or who gives you the ride like which exact person it is if you got one person instead of another it's pretty much the same to you as a as a consumer um which is quite different from if someone who's a streamer or an artist or a writer um and so uh this episode is brought to you by Google Chrome.

14:52You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once.

15:24So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. I think that the, you know, are we going to see this kind of culture happen? I think the, so to have a culture, you need to have a sense of us as ourselves, right? People have to know how things are done here. In the creator economy, that tends to happen because all the creators talk to each other.

16:08They're all on every social media service. and therefore they're all talking to each other and they're all connected. In the gig economy, I don't see it as much in the same way because people are, it's more atomized. And I don't know if you can meaningfully speak of a culture there without a sense of collective we and us. Now, you have that for obviously for W2 employees in most companies. You have it for people who are full-time employees because they have a sense of we and us. We all go to this place together. Although I do wonder in the future where people are working remotely, I think many jobs might feel less that way.

16:54It might feel a little bit more like a gig economy job, a little more isolated.

16:57Emmett Shear:So I probably should have done this sooner, but I would assume that some of our viewers are like, okay, I love this. I love Twitch. This is really cool. And probably some people are, okay, this seems interesting. I'm not really sure what we're talking about here. So, you know, if you're willing to just quickly, the sort of what is Twitch, how has it evolved? And, you know, while you're at it, where do you think it's going? Just to level set a little bit for people who aren't familiar.

17:23So Twitch is a live video streaming community. We enable anyone to stream live, build an audience, interact with that audience via chat, and monetize. and obviously we've been I don't know what obviously we've been known most for our gaming content so people streaming video games much like someone might stream sports or cooking but over the past few years we've actually expanded quite a bit out of gaming our biggest category now is actually talk shows and people just chatting often about finance or about politics or about just whatever catches their fancy. And that's been a big category. And I think as we go forward, what I'm really excited about is expanding the set of people who can stream.

18:25Because streaming is a very socially connected form of social media. Most social media is pretty isolated. Streaming you do with your audience. You don't do it just by yourself. And the audience does it with each other. And it's participatory in a way that VOD content isn't. And so video on demand content. Sorry, I should probably just use random acronym. But yes, the on demand video clips are a little bit more isolated intrinsically. Live video you get to do with people. It's interactive in that way. And that means that every stream has its own little culture. And I want to, I think where we're headed, we want to bring that to everyone.

19:09Emmett Shear:And then to what extent do you police that? To what extent, you know, literally can anybody stream or, you know, to what extent do you set rules, guardrails, you can do this, you can't do that? Yeah, we have a pretty extensive set of community guidelines. We update them regularly. we have a pretty robust reporting and monitoring process around that combination of proactive and reactive tools. And generally, I think one of the interesting things is that content can't go viral very easily when it's live, because if there was some crazy... This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new.

19:51It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra.

20:24Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. It's a viral moment. You were either there or you weren't, right? It's gone now. And so what tends to happen is on live, channels build up slowly over time. So you'll have someone who's a bigger streamer who has lots of people who watch them every day. But it's hard for something crazy to happen that goes really viral. And a lot of the worst content, a lot of the things you have to really watch out for are kind of viral content.

21:08And so that makes our job in some ways easier where if you're a big streamer with a lot of reach who's going to impact a lot of people, you're going to be careful not to break the rules because you have a lot to lose. Whereas if a piece of content can go viral, people will push the limits more because if they get punished, well, whatever. I'm not a big user of the service anyways. It doesn't really matter. I can just create a new account. And I think that skin in the game for the people who have the reach is really important. Having a lot of reach, it took you a lot of time, a lot of effort to grow that reach.

21:47You do not want to lose it. and so I think that's a big part of our enforcement.

21:53Emmett Shear:So our show, by the way, so we're streaming on LinkedIn, we're streaming on YouTube, and for the first time on Twitch, so hopefully developing a new audience with Twitch on that. So you mentioned that there are talk shows, things like this, but yeah, what a lot of people think about when they think about Twitch is gaming and other things that you could view as sort of solitary entertainment and yet people are watching. And that's a whole new, not new, but anyway, a whole different aspect of entertainment. But my question is, to what extent did that grow and expand during the pandemic because of the pandemic when we were in lockdown part of the time and maybe this entertainment was more appealing?

22:37We find that Twitch grows a lot whenever people have spare time at home. so there's a big there's a big jolt of growth uh uh every christmas break um right after christmas and new year there's this there's this uh surge of growth then um we find that uh that you see the same thing around other other holidays occasion although not quite as big as christmas um and uh uh the pandemic was sort of a giant holiday from that point of view you had a bunch of people who are trapped home needing time and needing connection. And so, yeah, we grew a lot during the pandemic. And we've retained a good deal of that growth since.

23:24Not all of it. Some of those people have gone back to doing whatever they were doing before, hopefully going outside. But many people have kept using Twitch. And I think that actually points to one of our biggest challenges uh twitch is a lot of fun but it's not that easy to learn it takes some some time and commitment to figure out how it works um and so uh we tend to grow uh uh when people have that time