news
Social media app Twitch set to introduce short-form video features
At its recent TwitchCon Paris event, the Amazon-owned live streaming app Twitch announced it is introducing a new Discovery Feed and some other short-form video features.
Twitch is the latest social media app to introduce a TikTok-like Discovery Feed. Launching later this year after testing, the Discovery Feed - a scrollable feed in the Twitch app - will show users a personalized mix of Clips from creators’ streams, whether the streamer is live or not.
Introduced following streamers’ feedback requesting a way to reach users when they are not livestreaming, the Discovery Feed is aimed at helping streamers be discovered and grow their audiences. Twitch has however made it clear in a blog post that it is still all about live, interactive channels: “it’s not our goal for viewers to spend hours in a Clips feed. Our investment in Clips is to help viewers discover your channel so they join you and your community when you stream”.
There are also improvements to the built in Clip Editor to help streamers edit and share content on other social platforms. Creators can natively edit Clips from their streams into vertical format and export to YouTube, and from late August creators will be able to export their Clips directly to TikTok as well to drive viewers to their Twitch channel. Clip Editor will also be made available on mobile.
The popular Stories format is also coming to Twitch. Launching in October, Stories will show up on the Following page of the Twitch mobile app and creators will be able to set their Stories to be viewable to everyone or shared only with paying subscribers. Stories will have to adhere to Twitch’s community guidelines.
Finally, Twitch is planning to give creators more control over when ad breaks play during their streams. There have been complaints that although streamers can see countdown timers for ad breaks their content has been interrupted by ads at crucial moments, without enough warning. So, starting this month, streamers will have access to an ad countdown timer in the chat box which shows them (and their viewers) precisely when an ad is coming up. There is then the option for the streamer to snooze the ad if it’s about to disrupt an exciting bit of game play or if they are in the middle of talking with their community.
This new feature comes shortly after Twitch revoked a controversial proposed ad policy that would have restricted the kinds of branded content that creators had the ability to include in their streams and potentially hinder their ability to monetize content.
After years of complaints from its creators about the lack of growth opportunities for smaller streamers, Twitch is finally following in the footsteps of other social platforms and introducing a Discovery Feed, Stories and other features to help its creators to grow their audiences and for Twitch to hold on to its primary community. With gaming content such a huge part of other social media platforms, while Twitch is generally preferred by streamers because of the additional monetization capabilities around live streaming, it is behind YouTube when it comes to distribution numbers and TikTok is fast turning its focus to gaming. So, Twitch cannot afford to stand still with innovations on the platform or it will risk both creators and viewers switching to those that offer a more enhanced experiences.
