It’s no big secret that Twitch has found itself in hot water on more than one occasion in recent months. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen some awkward changes on the platform that have seemingly forced thousands of streamers off the site and into the waiting, wide-open arms of Kick, Twitch’s newest competitor.
But recently, during the TwitchCon Paris event, several amendments and additions to the Twitch platform were announced that were – surprisingly – quite good. From increased discoverability to enhancements to Twitch’s on-site tools, several items were revealed that should genuinely benefit the millions of streamers using the platform.
So, Twitch – What’s Changing?
In a blog post published on the Twitch.tv platform, there were nine significant changes revealed by the team, all of which are genuinely quite good. Here’s a snapshot breakdown of what’s changing:
- Improvements to the Clip Editor, promoting more control over Clips, bringing the tool to mobile, and offering direct exports to TikTok as of August.
- Introducing the Discovery Feed, which will allow users to explore Clips as they would on TikTok, scrolling through an algorithm-driven catalogue of Clips.
- Marking Featured Clips, which will see streamers ‘favouriting’ Clips that will surface more readily in the Discovery Feed.
- Adding Stories to Twitch, which is a feature that’s present on almost every social media site these days – it’s now coming to Twitch.
- Improvements to the Guest Star feature, making it easier for streamers to collaborate and stream together.
- Promoting Shared Mod Comments, which enable mods and streamers to share comments about why certain users are banned.
- Brand-new Alert System, optimised with features like an ‘Alert Randomiser’ and emote customisation options.
- Added Stream Events, it started with ‘Streamer-versaries’, but it’s being expanded to include IRL birthdays, with more to come soon.
- Ad Break enhancements, with Twitch offering better control over Ad Breaks on the platform, including the ability to ‘snooze’ them to avoid a key moment being interrupted.
Try as hard as I might, I can’t see one change on that list that could be taken negatively, which is a huge indicator of the times preparing to change for Twitch. In recent months, the platform has struggled with some of its biggest creators – such as xQc and Amouranth – picking up contracts from Kick.
Are you excited about the new changes coming to Twitch?
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