Highlights:

  • The Discovery Feed will be a vertically scrollable feed in the Twitch app that serves users non-live snippets from creators’ broadcasts, similar to TikTok.
  • Users will be able to export footage straight to TikTok starting in August, and Twitch also has enabled direct exports to YouTube. The clip editor will also work well on mobile devices.

After years of complaints from its creators about the paucity of growth opportunities for smaller broadcasters, Twitch is launching a Discovery Feed.

During the recent opening ceremony of TwitchCon Paris, the company announced the Discovery Feed and a host of other new features. Although live streaming is the platform’s bread and butter, most creators rely on promoting their content on YouTube Shorts and TikTok to attract viewers to their Twitch channel.

The Discovery Feed will be vertically scrollable in the Twitch app, similar to TikTok, serving users non-live snippets from creators’ broadcasts. Unlike TikTok and other short-form video platforms, Twitch has clarified that it does not prioritize bite-sized content over streaming.

The company said in a blog post, “Because Twitch is 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.”

The Discover Feed will go live in the autumn, according to Twitch, but in the interim, the business will test its algorithms with “limited versions” of the tool.

The transition toward short-form video includes new features enabling creators to edit clips from their broadcasts natively into a vertical format. Users will be able to export footage straight to TikTok starting in August, and Twitch also has enabled direct exports to YouTube. The clip editor will also work well on mobile devices.

Sharing content with “minimal effort” is a “win for all streamers,” according to Twitch.

And in October, like virtually every other significant social platform, Twitch will launch stories. Stories will appear on the Following page of the Twitch mobile app, and creators will have the option to make their stories available to the public or only to paying subscribers. Stories must comply with Twitch’s Community Guidelines and will be moderated using automated “text and image scanning technology.”

Twitch said, “The stories format is well understood — ephemeral clips, pictures, text updates, polls. What’s exciting about Twitch stories is your ability to reach all your Twitch followers or to share with subscribers only.”

Additionally, the company is altering its approach to advertisement breaks, which have been a source of contention between the platform and its users. Many streamers have claimed that advertisements interrupt their content without giving them enough notice, even though they may monitor countdown timers for ad breaks.

Beginning this month, streamers can enable a chat countdown timer to anticipate commercial breaks better. The countdown timer enables streamers to “snooze or pull ahead,” allowing them to “make the right calls” for the community.

Under Guest Star, the feature that enables collaboration between broadcasters, creators will be able to invite visitors onto their channels and stream concurrently. The “streaming together” feature, which will begin spreading out for a “select number of channels” in August, enables up to five creators to stream on their respective channels simultaneously. In the coming months, the feature will be accessible to everyone, regardless of partner or affiliate status, allowing broadcasters of all levels to increase engagement.

Dan Clancy, Twitch CEO, said during the TwitchCon Paris opening ceremony, “Twitch, the service as it was five years ago, would not be able to support our community today, and the Twitch of today will not meet the needs of the Twitch community five years from now. So we need to keep building.”