Twitch announces new features including stream summary, enabling raids on mobile devices, new moderation tools, and more

Livestreaming giant, Twitch announced a bunch of new and upcoming features during a recent patch_notes broadcast on their official channel. The two-hour-long stream was hosted by the platform's Lead Community Producer, Zachary Ryan, and Community Marketing Manager, Ray Apollo.

After the end of the broadcast, the Amazon-owned company took to Twitter to provide details on the essential features that will be rolled out in the near future.

The set of most-anticipated features included stream summaries, enabling raids from mobile devices, revamps to the IRL section on mobile devices, new moderation tools, and pinning chat messages.

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Twitch showcases the highly-requested features coming on the livestreaming platform

The platform's president, Dan Clancy, was featured in the August 25 patch_notes livestream. He provided insights into what Twitch hoped to achieve by delivering the new features.

At the 21-minute mark, Dan Clancy talked a bit about the recent partner changes, which removed the content creator's exclusivity clause from the contract.

Following that, he stated that it was important to provide possibilities for creators to experiment, explore, and seek out opportunities that were appropriate for them. He stated:

"The social media landscape has changed radically through the years. Twitch has changed radically. Twitch is in a very different position, and we're at times, when we think of creators being creators first, it is important to give you an opportunity to experiment and explore and look for opportunities that you that are right for you."

He continued further by saying:

"To be clear, we still think that it's best to focus on one primary platform for livestreaming. We think that it's an important part of building a community because the community comes back, and it's looking to find you at a similar time. One reason why streaming on a regular schedule is so important."

The minute-long clip ended with Dan Clancy mentioning:

"We also feel very comfortable to think that Twitch is the best place to build and sustain a community, but we know we have partners that have different opportunities, in terms of promotional opportunities, or they just want to experiment or explore other platforms, and we'd want to support that."

Following the address, the hosts began showcasing the upcoming features planned to hit the livestreaming service. Community members will finally be able to download clips on their mobile devices, and this feature is scheduled to launch in late September:

Later this year, stream summaries, enabling raids using mobile devices, and an overhaul of the IRL flow on mobile devices will be introduced:

Twitch's Product Manager Jacca "Merry Kish" revealed that the platform would be introducing a new feature called "native shout outs." She said:

"Shout outs are when one streamer actively suggests another, they happen all the time, enter everyone at some point, and say, 'Hey chat, you should totally check out Merry Kish, and she has really cool emotes,' it happens so much that a lot of creators who use bot commands for this. So now, your viewers will be able to follow them or set a reminder to check them out later, without ever having to leave your stream"

Merry Kish explained how the feature works:

"The command is only available to broadcasters and their mods (channel moderators), and once a shout out is given, everyone in the chat can see it happen. Only the people that are not following the channel will get the popup that you see here (pointing at a notification on stream) with more information."

This October, Twitch will be updating their Insights Navigation tab:

Creator Chat Highlights, a chat moderation tool, will be available to all streamers and their channel moderators by the end of September:

An experiment, called Pinned Chat, was well-liked by thousands of streaming community members on Twitter:

Another channel moderation tool called Shared Ban Info will be hitting the platform next year:

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Streaming community reacts to the upcoming features

The announcement thread featured a handful of fan reactions. Some of the most relevant ones were along these lines:

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Twitch is home to some of the most well-known content creators in the streaming world, and these improvements aim to enhance the experience for its users.