Twitch Takes First Steps to Boost Discovery for Small Streamers

Twitch’s Featured Clips: Your Key to Better Discovery

Twitch has launched a new feature called Featured Clips (opens in a new tab) to boost streamer visibility and improve user discovery. This feature grants streamers and their editors control over which clips are showcased across Twitch and in the upcoming Discovery Feed.

Why are Featured Clips important?

• Your channel page will default to showing only your Featured Clips.
• The “Clips We Think You’ll Like” shelf on the Twitch homepage will be replaced with a “Featured Clips We Think You’ll Like” shelf.
• Featured Clips will be prioritized in the Mobile Discovery Feed. Experiments for Twitch’s new scrollable clips viewer begin later this month (opens in a new tab).
• Twitch will roll out a new “Featured Clips from Smaller Communities” shelf on the Twitch homepage.
• Viewers will see a new “Recently Featured Clips” shelf on the mobile Following tab from streamers they follow.
• Users will also be able to add your Featured Clips to their Twitch stories, rolling out later this year.

The roll-out of the Discovery Feed experiment on Twitch, originally scheduled to start on August 8th, has been delayed (opens in a new tab). It will now begin later this month. Selected users will be part of this initial roll-out, with a full launch planned for later in the year.

Currently, only streamers and their editors can feature Clips (opens in a new tab), but plans are in place to allow streamers to grant featuring permissions to other community members in the future. Streamers and their editors can feature any Clips of their channel created by any viewer on Twitch.

Twitch has also added Featured Clips views to the Overview chart in Analytics (opens in a new tab), helping streamers to understand how their Featured Clips are performing compared to non-featured Clips.

The Power of Influence: The Chaos of Kai Cenat’s NYC Giveaway

A giveaway event hosted by popular streamers Kai Cenat (opens in a new tab) and Roberto “Fanum” Gonzalez (opens in a new tab) in New York City’s Union Square Park turned into chaos, leading to injuries, arrests, and traffic disruption (opens in a new tab).

The event was announced just 24 hours before to their combined 17+ million followers across Twitch, Instagram, and Twitter, promising PlayStation 5 consoles and $100 gift cards.

The disorder escalated to the point where city authorities had to divert subway trains from Union Square. By 6pm, around 65 people had been arrested, including Kai Cenat, who was charged with inciting a riot and unlawful assembly (opens in a new tab).

The incident has sparked discussions about the responsibilities of influencers and the potential negative impacts of their influence. Amid the chaos, Cenat’s team released a statement (opens in a new tab), acknowledging their growing influence and responsibility and expressing their disheartenment over the disorderly conduct that affected innocent people and businesses.

This incident serves as a crucial reminder for streamers and content creators about the power and responsibility that comes with their influence.

Discord Levels Up: Introducing Xbox Game Streaming

Discord has announced a new feature that allows Xbox users to stream their games directly to Discord (opens in a new tab). This highly requested feature, previously exclusive to PC and mobile users, will initially roll out to Xbox Insiders before becoming widely available to all users.

This development is a significant leap in the livestreaming industry, as it expands Discord’s capabilities to include game streaming for Xbox users. Last year, Discord introduced the ability to use Voice Chat (opens in a new tab) with friends using Xbox. This could potentially increase the number of streamers and viewers on Discord, impacting the overall livestreaming landscape.

While Twitch remains the dominant platform for broadcasting gameplay to a wide audience, Discord’s update signifies its potential growth in the livestreaming industry. However, Discord’s strength lies in its community-building tools (opens in a new tab) and its ability to facilitate close-knit, private interactions.

If Discord were to try and compete directly with Twitch, they would need to implement more public-facing features, like a discovery algorithm for finding new streamers, more robust chat moderation tools, and a monetization system for streamers.

News Highlights

• Twitch revises its Prohibited Gambling Content policy (opens in a new tab), putting a ban on CSGO Gambling Sponsorships.
• Twitch updates its chat replies (opens in a new tab), now only showing the person or message you’re responding to.
• YouTube allows creators to monitor new and recurring viewers across various formats (opens in a new tab) such as videos, livestreams, and shorts.
• YouTube is collaborating with Ludwig to host the “YouTube World’s Greatest” gaming tournament (opens in a new tab).
• Kick has introduced gifted subs on iOS (opens in a new tab) (with Android coming soon) but added a 30% charge to cover Apple’s processing fees.
• An independent security audit (opens in a new tab) of Kick revealed security vulnerabilities.
• TikTok is testing a new feature allowing creators to post full-length podcasts (opens in a new tab) to the platform.
• Minecraft modifies its guidelines (opens in a new tab), bringing about changes that will impact content creators.