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Tim “TimTheTatman” Betar starts his stream the same way every day. Turning on his camera after playing an intro video montage, the hefty, heavily tattooed influencer begins a daily conversation with his viewers filled with memes, banter, donations, and videos.
It’s Betar’s way of slowly working his way into the broadcast without necessarily playing a game and connecting with his audience more intimately. Often times, viewers use Twitch’s 
donation feature to send Betar messages that are often read out loud for other viewers to hear, and frequently donations will include links to funny videos and songs that fans want Betar to react to.
There’s a running joke on Betar’s stream that he takes a long time to “get into gameplay,” which is typically Fortnite , but if you watch the stream much, you’ll realize that many viewers enjoy his twice-daily Just Chatting session and tune in specifically for it.
The growth of Just Chatting over the course of the year has not only been a steady, reliable source of viewership for Twitch overall, but it has also been a vehicle that streamers can use to improve their brand and incite a sense of community among viewers.
The “IRL” category on Twitch was retired in September of 2018 and divided into several sub-categories, but Just Chatting became the main spinoff of IRL to gain long-term sustained success, even outperforming the more encompassing IRL category that birthed it.
Early in Just Chatting’s life, a few streamers used the category in creative ways to generate viewership including Chance “Sodapoppin” Morris and Erik “Gronk” Range. As other streamers began to see the value of taking time off of gaming to “Just Chat” with their viewers, the category outgrew its predecessor.
As the category has grown, a few other influencers have emerged as users of “Just Chatting.” So far this year, Félix “xQc” Lengyel is the most-watched personality in the Just Chatting category with 14.7M hours watched, more than 6M hours watched higher than the second most-watched streamer.
Lengyel, who was a dedicated Overwatch streamer in 2018 and Overwatch League player, has transitioned to streaming exclusively and made a name for himself by playing a variety of games this year.
Much of his Just Chatting viewership comes early on in his stream when he watches videos with a wide range of topics. For one stream in particular, Lengyel opened his stream by watching a cypher rap, which his chat seemed to take joy in making fun of. Following the rap video, Lengyel watched entertaining videos that were clipped from other influencers streams, a speedrun from a Mario video game, and a YouTube review of top games that are speculated to be in development.
The point of watching the videos for Lengyel isn’t necessarily to show off the content he’s viewing himself. Instead, the content he’s watching is a way for him to have organic interactions with his viewers that create a connection between Lengyel and fans in a way that he might not be able to get while he’s focusing on playing a game.
Another thing that makes Just Chatting so helpful for people like Lengyel is the “variety” nature of his stream. Because he’s not playing the same game every day, day-in and day-out, having a way to stay connected with his community in-between games serves as a helpful way for him to grow his personal brand.
Lengyel’s focus on streaming has not only been a boon for his increased viewership due to more airtime, but his average viewership has also gone up as well. In 2018, he had an average of 9K concurrent viewers, due in part to a sporadic streaming schedule while he was playing in OWL. This year, however, that average has jumped to 14K CCV with 971 hours of his airtime falling under the Just Chatting category.
Though Lengyel’s success can’t exclusively be explained by the use of Just Chatting, he is a growing part of the Twitch community of broadcasters that is using the category to make deep connections with an audience of fans who value authentic interactions with influencers.
