Google is reportedly close to a deal to buy Twitch, the streaming video service, for $1 billion, and make it part of YouTube. Twitch is a platform where gamers can watch other gamers play video games, but that's not the only attraction. As Buzzfeed notes, more than half of the most-watched videos on the site feature a handful of young women who habitually play in low-cut tank tops, with the camera positioned just so. This kind of thing:
With screen names like Kaceytron (pictured) and KneeColeslaw, these women have six-figure followings, whom they can hit up for subscription fees and donations. Kaceytron's donation page explains her terms: "Donations of $1 or more trigger the sound. I try to read donations on stream as much as possible, however, if I am busy in a game I may miss it."
It's no secret that prominently displayed cleavage in a thumbnail preview is a foolproof way to get people (presumably mostly men) to click. YouTube knows this only too well. A few years ago, it wrestled with the issue of what were known as "reply girls." As defined by Know Your Meme, "'Reply Girls,' are female YouTubers who are known for uploading videos in response to an already popular or trending video in an attempt to capitalize on the high view counts. They typically use sexually suggestive thumbnails, often with prominently exposed cleavage, to solicit views."
Thanks to YouTube's Partner Program, the more popular reply girls didn't have to solicit donations to make serious money. But they were viewed as spam, both by users and the network itself. YouTube tried tinkering with its algorithm, adjusting the weight of factors like time spent watching to drive reply-girl videos down in suggested results, but eventually it just ended up scrapping the video response feature that enabled them altogether.
I reached out to a few of Twitch's top cleavage-cam gamers to ask if they're worried that YouTube, once it takes possession of Twitch, could take similar actions to curb their visibility. I heard back from KneeColeslaw, whose channel has almost 14 million views. She wrote this:
I was unfamiliar with the term "reply girl" so I had to look it up. From my understanding, it's girls who replied to popular YouTube videos and wore low cut tops to get more views on their videos. YouTube responded to this by giving more weight to time watched rather than views for ad revenue.
With that knowledge, I'll say that I'm not that concerned. Ad revenue is only a small portion of my income and ad revenue from highlights is even smaller. Now you could say that higher viewed videos gives me more popularity and brings in more viewers and that may be affected with the merge. That is certainly possible but I am not entirely concerned with it. Streaming is a hobby and a way to make extra money outside of my "real" job. Should I lose popularity and money as a consequence of this new deal, as we say here in Louisiana, "c'est la vie." To be honest, my main concerns are less about money and more about what this means as far as site changes are concerned. I'm known to be resistant to change and I'm curious and anxious to see what this merge has in store for the site.
