Twitch Introduces Stories and Feed to Help Find Streamers to Watch

In a surprising turn of events, LinkedIn has introduced Stories before Twitch. Twitch recently announced that its users will soon have the ability to record Stories, almost eight years after Instagram adopted the feature from Snapchat. The launch of this ephemeral media format is scheduled for October and will be featured on the Following page of the Twitch mobile app. These Stories will be subject to Twitch’s Community Guidelines and safety systems, and creators will have the option to restrict their visibility to their followers only.

Stories is one of the features Twitch launched on Saturday. In the fall, the company announced plans to introduce a new Discovery Feed, which it promises will make it easier for creators to grow their audience even if they don’t stream. Like Stories, Discovery Feed appears on the company’s mobile app and includes live and recorded content.

“Since Twitch is all about live interactive channels, our goal is not to have viewers spend hours on the Clips feed,” Twitch said. “We’re investing in Clips to help viewers find your channel so they can join you and your community when you’re streaming.” Twitch plans to conduct limited testing of Discovery Feed before rolling out the feature to the wider Twitch user base in late 2023. Other features the company said it is working on include improvements to the platform’s built-in clip editor. Late next month, the tool will allow creators to export vertical videos directly to TikTok.

On Saturday, Twitch said it would also give creators more control over when commercial breaks are played during their streams. The new chat timer shows exactly when an ad is about to start playing. Streamers can delay showing an ad if it interferes with an exciting game or conversation with the community. The feature comes after Twitch last month scrapped a proposed advertising policy that would have limited the type of branded content producers have been able to include in their streams.