this weekend, Snatch organized its famous European TwitchCon. After leaving Paris last year, the event took place in Rotterdam.
Over the course of two days, visitors could get to know the most popular steamboats on the continent, participate in workshops, and even take part in numerous conferences and fairs of all kinds.
However, during the opening ceremony Dan Clancy, CEO of the company, did some juicy announcements.
Between them, a complete overhaul of the Twitch mobile app. Until now, the mobile version of the platform offered the same design and the same capabilities (but weaker) as the desktop version or the PC application.
Navigation is optimal if you know who to watch, but much less if you want to discover new talents. Precisely for this reason the Twitch app will soon have a brand new format, similar TikTok.
The company explains that this idea arose from a simple and unequivocal observation: 70% of new users use their smartphone or a tablet to watch live streams on Twitch.
That’s why it’s important to adapt to this audience by offering a simple and effective way to launch any stream.
Although it won’t be implemented for several months, TwitchCon attendees got to see its first features.
Twitch’s TikTok
Once the app is opened, users are greeted with live streams. Now all it takes is a simple swipe gesture to move on to the next one, while supplies last (spoiler: it’s impossible).
The recommended broadcasts are a priori based on your preferences, your games or channels you follow or even the topics of your life.
This redesign is therefore the perfect way to find new personalities with a simple gesture, without having to search by category or nickname. To actively participate in the live, all you have to do is click on it.
The channels you follow are also very easily accessible, but users will have access to a whole new world, at their fingertips.
This will increase the visibility of all streamers, and it could bring their share of online harassment along the way.
When asked about this topic, Rachel Delphin, head of marketing, assures us that the usual tools will still be in place and this should prevent toxic behavior from spreading.
However, we have to keep in mind that not all humble content creators have moderators and could run into problems with all this new flow of people, as is the case with TikTok.
No one is anonymous and you must always have an account to post comments. It remains to be seen how it will perform once the app is finally in hand.
An experience redesigned for mobile
Second, Twitch will too update your stories briefly. They represent a major new mobile feature. They allow streamers to share 60-second videos directly with their community, even when they’re not live.
Partners can already use this feature from June 24 and branches will have access to it during the summer. Stories will also be available on the web version of Twitch, but we don’t currently have an availability date.
Finally, Twitch wants to simplify the creation of clips by optimizing the process of finding streamers. The goal is to be able to automatically generate portrait and landscape versions of clips.
This enhancement allows broadcasters to edit, title, record and publish clips in one step.
The portrait clips are designed specifically for viewing on mobile media, such as the Discovery feed, and will soon be visible on the channel’s mobile site.