Seems like Amazon has gotten one step closer to figuring out what the hell to do with Twitch. Twitch has implemented a new Shopping category that features nothing but streamers selling products at you, reinventing QVC from first principles. It occurs to me that there might be a number of “age-challenged” readers who don’t know what QVC is. It’s a television channel devoted entirely to selling things your grandma might like. But instead of Precious Moments figurines or incredibly ugly chunky necklaces, these creators are hawking everything from Vitamix blenders to faux-leather handbags.
Twitch is promoting the category on the main page with both prime placement above the main category carousel and with a navigation link at the top of the page. Perusing the streams, it seems like the creators are going down a provided list of stuff, with links to the product’s Amazon listings provided in a carousel embedded on the page. It doesn’t seem like any actual Twitch streamers are getting in on the new shopping category just yet, just that Amazon has ported its Amazon Live program—wherein creators demo products in exchange for a cut of whatever they manage to sell—to a place where it can potentially capture more eyeballs and more dollars. Speaking of capturing more dollars, Twitch is also experimenting with how it evaluates a streamer’s ad fitness, using AI to transcribe streamers’ content to determine how or if to display ads against it.
The timing of this salvo of consumerism coincides with the arrival of Amazon Prime Days, which go on today and tomorrow. It’s likely, though, that the Shopping category will stick around like a withered vestigial appendage as Amazon attempts to compete with TikTok and Instagram in the great attention economy wars, emphasis on “economy.” Its (hopefully) unlikely, though, that Twitch will go the way of TikTok Live, and become a place where nearly every stream is someone shouting at you to buy something.
