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On January 25, Twitch published a new blog post outlining some of the most significant updates planned for 2023. The platform's Chief Product Officer Tom Verrilli and Chief Monetization Officer Mike Minton shared this news.
Twitch's main focus this year will be the "growth" of the content creators' earnings and their community. They revealed that they will be releasing a new set of tools and products to "make it easier" for streamers to earn "without impacting" their growth.
The purple platform's social media handles further explained some of the major updates planned for 2023, including giving streamers more ways to earn, new tools that "reduce effort" to promote streams, improved ad experiences, and more.
"Our main focus for the year is your growth" - Twitch details updates planned for the platform in 2023
In a blog post titled "2023: An Open Letter from Our Chief Product Officer and Chief Monetization Officer," the Amazon-owned livestreaming platform revealed that they will be launching new products and tools for streamers and the community.
The first update they mentioned was giving streamers "more options to earn," with Sound Bites being one of the upcoming additions. Viewers will be able to "pay to interact" with a content creator using this feature:
"One of those experiences will be Sound Bites, our first-party sound alerts that allow viewers to pay to interact with and support their favorite streamers. Another will be an update to Cheering to give streamers the ability to recognize viewers in more personalized ways."
The platform also announced the development of a "meaningful sponsorship solution," in which selected streamers will be able to customize their channels to make it "more lucrative and impactful" for a particular brand.
An excerpt from the post read:
"Starting with channel skins and clickable branded graphics, streamers can easily place these brand assets onto streams, above chat, and other places on your channel page for a less disruptive and more engaging sponsorship experience. Once we land on the right solution, we’ll roll this out to more streamers."
In the next section, Twitch revealed brand new ways to help streamers promote their content both on and off Twitch.
They announced the availability of tools for content creators to edit and export livestream clips in vertical and short-form video formats. Some of the other new features included in this section were:
"Pinned Clips, which will allow you to pin up to 20 clips to your channel page. These clips will give new viewers a better idea of what your stream is about, and will be fully at your discretion and include safety controls. Stream Title emotes will let you, wait for it, add emotes into your stream title. The Upcoming Streams section is coming to Twitch mobile apps. This will help viewers keep track of and tune in to streams for all the streamers they follow, all in one place."
Improved ad experience
The ad experience on Twitch is one of the most contentious aspects, with many prominent personalities expressing their dissatisfaction with the feature. Twitch star and One True King (OTK) co-founder Zack "Asmongold" claimed that ads on the platform were "cannibalistic" towards content.
To address this, Twitch announced that they will be making changes to the overall ad experience, including an update to the way channels can disable pre-roll ads:
"First, we’re updating the way disabling pre-rolls works for channels. Running three minutes of ads per hour in any way will disable all pre-rolls — they no longer have to be split into 90-second ads every 30 minutes. Second, we’re applying our Picture-by-Picture experience to the majority of pre-rolls that viewers do see."
Twitch stated that they were "exploring ways" to provide the community with a "heads-up" and the ability to snooze mid-roll advertisements:
"We’re also exploring ways to give communities a heads up when ads are coming and the ability to snooze video mid-roll ads. We will make it easier for you to flag to your community when you’re working with advertisers on branded content."
Other updates planned for 2023
Other updates planned for 2023 include improving the Guest Star feature, enabling "deeper community interaction" via first-party tools, and a new Creator Home dashboard that will allow streamers to create a "personalized and dynamic home base." This should allow content creators to connect with their community whether they are online or offline.
Fans react to the announcement
Twitch's announcement gained plenty of traction on Twitter as the reaction thread attracted over 190 fan reactions. Here's what the streaming community had to say:
The blog post concluded with the platform adding that they would be hosting their first Patch Notes livestream of the year. Interested readers can watch the broadcast on Twitch's official channel at 12 noon PT.
