[starkparker]

> Something relatively easy for small streamers to set up and manage on their own, cheap enough to start small and scale up as it starts to make money, with the ability to handle large-scale streams if necessary.

Self-hosted social networks and microblogs are all over the place and have been for decades, and Twitter is falling apart, but the audience is still on Twitter. Self-hosting streams has never been easier, but even if it were one-click it invariably costs money out of pocket for the bandwidth to self-host a stream, and Twitch does not. WordPress is trivial to host for nearly nothing; streaming, not so much.

The appeal of Twitch isn't livestreaming, it's the culture and existing social network of users and streamers who are already there, and the ease of starting up. The architecture or centralization of the next big thing in the space won't matter, it's whether both the creators, audience, and money will all show up at roughly the same time.