In March 2024, Dan Clancy celebrates his first year as CEO of Twitch. For the occasion, the former Google and NASA collaborator published an open letter to detail the ambitions of the streaming platform for the year 2024. If certain key points concern spectators, in particular the strengthening of security on the platform, the press release mainly focuses on improving the experience of streamers. Discover the main announcements.
Community development on Twitch
Dan Clancy expresses the wish to help creators “develop their community and strengthen their ties with it." . With this in mind, the platform will introduce new features:
- Sharing on social networks: sharing short clips on social networks will be made easier with the addition of a direct export to Instagram and a mobile version of the clip editor.
- Collaboration between creators: Collaboration between streamers will be encouraged. To do this, Twitch will develop the Stream Together feature, currently in beta, which allows creators to broadcast the same stream on several channels simultaneously (up to six channels). Soon, chats and audiences will be able to be merged into these sessions.
- Development of Stories: new options will be added to Stories (introduced in October 2023), with the aim of strengthening the connection with the community outside of streaming sessions.
Better compensation options
Creator remuneration is one of the subjects on which Twitch has been the subject of strong criticism. Last year, its new competitor, Kick, notably tried to exploit this weakness to poach certain streamers. In 2024, Amazon's service will offer a number of improvements to promote the monetization of its creators:
- Improvement on mobile: on the application, Twitch plans to modify “the way in which users can purchase subscriptions, gifts, and Bits” and to optimize the Hype Train.
- Sponsorship: In 2024, Twitch will increase the number of brands it collaborates with for creator sponsorship.
- Support options: new reward goals will be offered to the community to encourage subscriptions and donations.
- Increase in subscription prices: At the start of the year, the prices of certain subscriptions were increased in a few countries: Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Turkey. Other countries will be affected in 2024.
During a stream, the Hype Train is a short sequence that congratulates and encourages viewer engagement (donations and subscriptions).
Increased security for viewers
Regarding the viewer experience, Dan Clancy makes security a priority for 2024. To this end, Twitch recalls the efforts made last year, in particular with the integration of the group reporting tool, sharing moderator comments, and improved shield mode. This year, Twitch wants to actively combat harassment by updating the community guidelines.
The system of sanctions will thus be revised in order to better adapt them to the seriousness of the harm: “We want to ensure that when someone violates the community's guidelines, the suspensions that we impose correspond to the seriousness of the harm. We also recognize that some suspensions should not remain in place indefinitely, such as for violations of our policies on non-malicious or accidental behavior that are not likely to result in serious physical or emotional harm.
Tools aimed at detecting and blocking harassing messages in chats will also be developed.