Connect with us

Gaming

Twitch has some updates on the way to help stream discovery

The updates should help smaller streamers build an audience.

twitch homepage updates
Image: Twitch

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

It seems like we’re constantly seeing updates to the game-streaming platform, Twitch. Not only do we see quite a few updates, but Twitch has never been the most transparent about these changes, often springing them on users without any word of warning and being a bit vague on what exactly is changing.

Twitch seems to understand that and is now offering a roadmap, giving a bit of transparency to the process of their latest updates to stream discovery. This roadmap shows what is on the way, with the Pulse feature being replaced with recommended streams. There is also a focus it seems on helping smaller channels get noticed by improving the recommendations for viewers.

As the roadmap notes,

Throughout May and June we will replace Pulse on the homepage and mobile app with rows of recommended live streams.

Note: This change only affects people who are logged-in to a Twitch account.

In the Twitch mobile app, the mobile broadcasting feature will be relocated to the profile page.

So, when should we expect to see these updates? Well, the feature has been in beta, of sorts, since May, with 5% of users having the update. The data collected during that time should help the feature have a full rollout by the end of June, or possibly beginning of July, according to the roadmap.

This new and improved stream recommendation feature will also help smaller streamers get noticed, as noted in the roadmap.

When a channel averages less than 25 viewers per stream, our standard recommendation system has a hard time knowing which viewers will like that channel.

Every streamer on Twitch was once a ‘small streamer’. We want to invest specifically in helping streamers reach new audiences when they’re first starting out, so we will develop a small streamers recommendation system.

There is no timeline yet for this, but I imagine it would follow shortly after the updates mentioned above.

What do you think about the changes coming to Twitch? Excited for them? Let us know in the comments.

For more gaming news, see:

Follow us on Flipboard, Google News, or Apple News

Former KnowTechie editor.

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in Gaming