Everything We Announced at TwitchCon Paris
Today kicks off TwitchCon Paris, the third con we’ve hosted in Europe, and our first ever in Paris! We’re excited to bring the Twitch community back together IRL to celebrate global streamers and the powerful online communities that they’ve built. It’s a weekend filled with incredible live performances, interactive workshops, streamer meet and greet sessions, Twitch Rivals competitions, and first looks at some of the new products launching this year. And you can tune in from home to catch content streamed from different stages, including /twitch, /nomnom, /TwitchRivals, and /creatorcamp.
During the keynote we announced new features that we’re excited to share with the wider community. We also took it a step further and gave a behind-the-scenes look at other products on our roadmap.
Let’s take a look at what was announced during today’s opening ceremony. You can also watch the full keynote VOD here.
Improvements to the Clip Editor
Clips are a great way to give new viewers a feel for you and your community. And this year, we’ve been investing in tooling to help you make and share better Clips more easily. Back in May, we made it possible to natively edit your Twitch Clips into a vertical format, and to export them directly to your YouTube Channel. Coming in late August, we’ll start supporting direct exports to TikTok as well.
Helping you get your amazing content out onto your social sites with minimal effort is a win for all streamers. We announced that we’ll be adding more features to the Clip Editor, including trimming functionality and the ability to grant access to your video editors. We’re also bringing the Clip Editor to mobile.
Introducing the Discovery Feed
We’ve spent years building the best live streaming experience for streamers and viewers. Discovery is a crucial part of that experience. One of the most consistent pieces of feedback we get is that you want help growing even when you’re not live. We also get asked why we can’t make better use of Clips on Twitch itself. Points taken. And so today, we introduced the upcoming Discovery Feed on Twitch.
The Discovery Feed will be a scrollable feed in the Twitch app that shows users a personalized mix of Clips. Once this feed is rolled out, Twitch viewers will be able to discover Clips from tons of streamers’ channels, whether they’re live or not. 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.
We’ll launch the Discovery Feed later this fall. But before that full launch happens, we’ll be running experiments with limited versions of the Discovery Feed to help test and improve our algorithms and the overall experience.
Managing Featured Clips
Today we announced that beginning in August, you’ll be able to mark Clips as featured in your Creator Dashboard. You already have control over who can make Clips of your stream and the ability to easily delete ones you don’t like. We’ll prioritize showing your Featured Clips ahead of non-featured Clips in discovery surfaces, including the new Discovery Feed, and over time allow you to control which Clips appear in the feed.
Helping You Stay Connected to Your Community with Stories
Today we announced we’re bringing the stories format to Twitch, to help you reach your entire community, reliably, any time you’d like – even when you aren’t live. Reward your most engaged viewers with exclusive content, help viewers who can’t watch every stream stay connected to chat’s current memes and let people know when you’ll be live next.
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. Viewers will be able to see your stories, along with stories from all streamers they follow, on the Following page in the Twitch mobile app. And of course, to keep the community safe, stories are protected by our Community Guidelines, as well as automated text and image scanning technology. We’ll be launching stories in October, and we’ll continue to add more features over the next year.
Grow and Stream Together with Guest Star Updates
We’re also continuing to invest in Guest Star, which helps streamers easily make community based content. We’ve updated Guest Star with features like “Invite from Chat” and “Request to Join,” which you’ve been using in creative ways to team up live on stream.
One of the best ways for streamers to grow is to collaborate with other streamers. Today we’re excited to reveal that ‘streaming together’ is coming to Guest Star. You can be live on your channel, and your guest can be live on theirs, meaning everyone has more opportunity to grow. Streamers at any level — Partners, Affiliates, anyone — can stream together with Guest Star.
With this update, up to five streamers can join forces, all while live from their own channels. When streaming together, you can add your collaborators’ video feeds to your own stream, while still using your own Alerts and stream interactions. It’ll also be easy for viewers to see which streamers you’re collaborating with and follow their channels directly from yours. And of course, with Guest Star each guest is responsible for their own actions, meaning you don’t need to worry about getting a strike because of someone else’s behavior like you do when using voice comms.
This update will be available in August on a select number of channels. Over the following few months, it’ll become available to more streamers.
Helping Mods Keep Your Safe with Shared Mod Comments
Streamers and their communities know the true MVPs of their channels are the mods. Over the last year, millions of moderators have helped keep Twitch safe for everyone. To all mods, thank you for all that you do. And to help you keep doing your very important work, we shared an update for you.
Last year we announced Shared Ban Info, which lets you share a list of who you’ve banned in your channel with other streamers. The goal of this launch was to help streamers collaborate and keep serial harassers out of your communities. We’re building on this tool by adding Shared Mod Comments, which will let you share information with other streamers about why you’ve banned people in your channel. This additional detail can be vital information when deciding how best to protect your community, and will be in your hands in September.
New Alerts to Help You Incentivize & Reward Your Community
Last month we announced Alerts, which let you give your viewers more exciting recognition to thank them for their support. We think it’s vital that every streamer has access to Alerts to incentivize and reward spending, and they deserve first-party support from Twitch. We’re committed to making Alerts interactive and more fun, and ensuring new features have Alerts on day one. Today, we announced several Alerts updates that will roll out in the coming weeks.
You all have come up with some incredible Channel Point unlocks and soon, you’ll be able to celebrate those moments with full Alerts support. We’re also adding an Alert randomizer, which lets you create multiple Alerts for a certain action and then randomize which one plays. To make celebrations more personal, we’re adding emote customization options. And to help keep you safe during the times when you need it most, we’re adding Alerts integration into Shield Mode to allow streamers to easily pause Alerts if there’s an issue.
More Stream Events
Earlier this year we kicked off Stream Events with all new Streamer-versaries, which helped communities come together to celebrate the date a streamer made Partner or Affiliate. Today we’re updating Stream Events to include support for a streamers’ IRL birthday, along with first-time-you-streamed anniversaries. Whichever milestones you want to celebrate with your community, Stream Events will soon make it easier than ever.
Giving Streamers More Control Over Ad Breaks
This year, we’ve focused on making ads more lucrative, less interruptive, and easier for streamers to manage. One problem we want to solve is helping streamers know when an ad break is about to run. Maybe you’re in the middle of an important cut scene or a boss fight, and the last thing you want is for an ad to interrupt your content. Streamers can already see an ad countdown timer in the Dashboard, but it needs to be more convenient. To give you more control, we’re introducing the chat countdown timer. This optional feature will show streamers precisely when an ad is coming up, with options to snooze or pull ahead. With the chat countdown timer, you’ll have the information you need to make the right calls for your community. This feature is coming this month to the Ads Manager.
We’re excited to share more about today’s announcements in the coming days and weeks. We hope you’ll continue to share your feedback and thoughts.
See you in Chat!