In April 2024, Twitch introduced a tool familiar to TikTok users — a ‘Discovery Feed,’ which serves up a blend of both personalized content and recommendations based on one’s search and watch history.
Twitch touted this feed as “the quickest way to find content you love” on its platform… but a year later, broadcasters say this isn’t actually helping them get discovered.
Similar to TikTok, Twitch’s Discovery Feed provides a never-ending list of broadcasts, clips and communities that viewers can scroll through to find more of what they’re interested in, potentially allowing them to come across new streamers they haven’t yet watched in the process.
Twitch’s chief monetization officer, Mike Minton, stated that over half of Twitch’s video views from new viewers — along with 38 million new followers — are coming as a direct result of the Discovery Feed.
Twitch streamers say Discovery Feed isn’t helping channel growth
Twitch streamers claim they aren’t seeing any change as a result of Twitch’s discover feed changes, saying that Twitch is behind the curve when it comes to all these new features.
In statements to Digiday, three content creators spoke out about their experiences with growth after the Discovery Feed was implemented, or the lack thereof.
“For newer users, they already have TikTok / YouTube Shorts / Instagram Reels, so why would they ever want to watch poorly formatted vertical clips or boxed horizontal clips through Twitch when their current apps do it better?” said GappyV, a gaming variety streamer with over 13K followers.
One half of streaming duo HangTime had similar sentiments. “With all due respect to new creators, Twitch is and should only be considered a home base. Your channel will not grow.
“Whether you’ve been featured on the front page for a year straight (as I have), whether you make the biggest, most flamboyant content ever (as I have) — if that content is not blowing up on YouTube or TikTok… you will not grow on Twitch.”
A year after Twitch introduced its TikTok-style Discovery Feed, streamers say the tool hasn’t helped their channels grow.
In response to these concerns, Minton told Digiday that Twitch is aware of the drawbacks to its vertical feed as opposed to other platform, saying that “we recognize one of the biggest impediments to a really good feed experience is that most of our video is horizontal 16:9 [ratio].”
That’s not all; Minton also revealed that Twitch has plans to offer vertical live streaming in “a couple months” as a further improvement to the experience.
This latest statement from Milton comes after Twitch CEO Dan Clancy first revealed the upcoming change in February 2025, laying out plans to improve load times and the quality of broadcasts on the discovery feed.
Content shared from www.dexerto.com.