In 2022, Expect More Cross-Platform Livestreaming from Creators on Long- and Short-Form Platforms

TikTok’s short form videos are ideal for discovering new audiences. Meanwhile long-form platforms such as Twitch and YouTube are perfect for maintaining, engaging and growing a community of fans. The marriage of these elements will change the game for creators in the new year.

Take Twitch, for example: Its strength is that better-known creators can rapidly scale up. That’s because the platform’s discovery pages promote those with the most views, creating a flywheel effect where the more popular their content, the more they’re promoted, allowing them to rack up views and cement their popularity with their respective audiences.

TikTok, by contrast, provides smaller creators a better tool for becoming known. That’s because its feed-based, short-form model is powered primarily by looking at the audience's reaction to content, especially the viewer retention. As a result, there are far more opportunities for newcomers to blow up.

If you’re a creator looking to build an audience, it has become clear that embracing both of them is necessary to grow. In the coming year, TikTok creators who have had some success will migrate to Twitch or YouTube, where it's easier to build and maintain a community without having to compete with the world on a post-by-post basis. Streamers who have built their audiences on Twitch and YouTube will also move to short-form sites like TikTok to continue to grow their audience and bulletproof their personal brand.

The reason this dual platform approach is just starting to gain traction is because TikTok is still very nascent. It then got a huge boost during the pandemic and recently soared to over 1 billion users, elevating its status as a primary destination for the current generation. The key to success for any creator is to be where the audiences are and right now Twitch, YouTube and TikTok are where video consumption is happening.

Leveraging both types of video services will become crucial for creators looking to optimize their success, so expect to see it become the norm in 2022.