Written by Stocknews.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) is most prominently known for its rapidly growing retail presence, but its Twitch video game broadcasting service is growing fast — and just rolled out a new feature that could disrupt Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) forever.

Amazon acquired Twitch back in 2014 in a move that left a lot of non-gamers scratching their heads. Most of Main Street America — especially those over 40 years old — had never heard of Twitch and, those who had heard of the service which allows gamers to broadcast live video of them playing video games, probably didn’t think it was worth the $1 billion or so that Amazon paid for it.

As usual, though, Amazon had a long-term plan. The company recognized that video games would play an increasingly large role in popular culture in coming years. It also realized that the “YouTube of gaming” was a massively valuable platform that could be leveraged in different ways to keep audiences engaged.

In that vein, Twitch just launched a new service called Pulse. According to the company, Pulse is “A place where streamers can post and engage with all of their followers and the greater Twitch community right from the Twitch front page. It’s an always-on way to share clips, stream highlights, schedules, photos, and more so followers are more informed, engaged, and connected.”

It also looks and functions almost exactly like Twitter. Almost overnight, Twitch morphed from a broadcasting service to an all-in-one social network for sharing and interacting with everything gaming related.

The goal here, clearly, is to replace Twitter entirely for gamers. If the ultra positive reception in the gaming community is any indication, they may just have done exactly that.

Amazon.com, Inc. shares fell $2.81 (-0.33%) in premarket trading Tuesday. Year-to-date, AMZN has gained 12.53%, versus a 6.25% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

AMZN currently has a StockNews.com POWR Rating of A (Strong Buy), and is ranked #2 of 43 stocks in the Internet category.