Not until Twitch manages to fix their downlink connection problems. I haven't been able to watch a single HD cast without major lags and stuttering in months even though I'm on a very fast connection (granted, not by a major provider so no direct peering).

Twitch has promised to build new data centers here in Europe but I have only noticed it becoming worse. I'm not the only one too, I'm part of the Team Fortress 2 competitive community and get to talk to a lot of other Twitch viewers. Also, don't get me started on VODs on Twitch, they're even worse.

While VODs may start slow I find the playback much more reliable than streams here in Europe.

Have they fixed the issue where the same ad will repeatedly play back-to-back over the free version? It's been a while since I've tried to watch a Twitch stream because of that.

Since the Twitch player feels like it was written by monkeys in the 90s (while YT is finishing to roll-out its neat HTML5 player), I believe this is clearly not for the best.

Although, maybe the Twitch guys will compensate their awful technological lateness by showing some humanity (which Google seems less and less able to do).

Is Twitch monetized as well as YouTube for content creators? This isn't just about some place to post a video, it's about a place to post a video where you have 500k subscribes, get 500k views for every video, and make a decent living off your content.

I don't think that will last. It shouldn't take too long for rights holders to figure out that there are videos and live streams on Twitch that contain music and cut scenes, as well. Might be that Twitch is not receiving as much take-down notices, just yet. Imho that's not going to last. Since there is already people on their making money with their "property".