Twitch has today launched its new Stories feature on the platform's mobile app.
Originally announced at TwitchCon Paris, the feature works a bit like social media posts to allow streamers to create community with their followers even when not live.
The Stories shelf will appear at the top of the Following page. Creating Stories is currently limited to Partners and Affiliates who have streamed at least once in the past 30 days.
Stories can be images, clips, or freeform content using text, channel emotes and backgrounds. Once posted they will expire after 48 hours, with push notifications alerting followers of a new post. Engagement analytics will also be provided.
In addition, streamers with at least 30 subscribers (including gift subs) will be able to post sub-only stories — an extra incentive to persuade viewers to subscribe.
Twitch has already clarified that Stories will be held to the same Community Guidelines as other content on Twitch to ensure safety. Stories that violate these guidelines can be reported.
More features will also be added to Stories in the future, including mentioning other users, creating polls, uploading videos, and clip editing.
Stories will join the Discovery Feed in the app, which was also announced at TwitchCon Paris and includes clips from suggested streamers.
Together with clip editing and the ability to export clips directly to TikTok, Twitch is building these features with a mobile-first mindset. However, it is not aiming to be a complete social media platform.
«We're not building the Feeds to compete with TikTok, we don't want to build a platform where people just come and consume the feed for an hour a day,» product VP Jeremy Forrester told Eurogamer at TwitchCon Paris.
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