twitch discovery is solved whoa every small streamer is going to see explosive growth now
because twitch did an update that is going to heavily affect you and your stream's discovery
so everyone get excited to start growing at least that's what twitter is saying that the new update
is awesome and solves all your problems with discovery except that's not true and while the
update has a few improvements that i love it also has a few major issues that you need to know about
this video is breaking down exactly what the update is the pros the cons and what you should
consider doing to make the most of it and actually grow your stream hey i am a very sick Eljay from
streamscheme.com and also a variety streamer over at twitch.tve/eljayem_ links to both those
in the description as well as time codes you can skip ahead to whatever part of this video you want
i am incredibly congested today and we don't have a sponsor so i'll take the slot and say hey
why not go check out my new youtube channel i'll put at the top of the description i just kicked
it off and i'm really excited to make some content that isn't just education and news
so if you want to see me playing games dressing up like an idiot and doing dumb challenges check
it out with the link in the description before we break down the new update you probably need
to get a quick understanding of the old twitch system and the problems it had or might still have
after all you've heard the small stream of battlecry of twitch discovery is bad but maybe no
one's actually explained why twitch discovery is bad twitch sorts their categories by most viewers
which means it is what we call a king maker system essentially when one streamer gets lots of viewers
they rise to the top of a category or get more recommendations causing them to get more viewers
who come to browse on twitch so beginners or small streamers often sit right down at the bottom of
categories and never get any clicks because nobody scrolls down 20 000 streamers to find them and
nobody uses the filters over here to check by recommended or smallest despite what you might
hope and the sad reality is that very few even check categories most viewers who come to twitch
actually go straight to their follower list or favorite streamer meaning discovery on twitch
is relatively slow starting out think about it when you type twitch.tv into your bar it
usually auto-completes to your favorite streamer's channel aka amaranth not to a specific category
or directly to the home page speaking of the home page the old system on the homepage was the exact
same as categories essentially established creators tend to get more recommendations on
the homepage because they have more viewers more activity and more engagement the kingmaker system
has led to a lot of outcry from smaller creators asking twitch to do more for them and their
discovery and in turn this is the same reason why educators such as myself or harris heller often
push you guys to diversify across other platforms with algorithms such as tick tock or youtube
even if you hate that advice with all of your heart and soul and you tell me that you hate that
advice with all of your heart and soul but what is the new update and what has actually changed has
the king maker system been uncrowned well there are two major places that this update has changed
let's first talk about the category changes when you go to a category rather than seeing a big
list of auto generated thumbnails and streams instead you now just see a small row of streams
and a big preview window that shows the top stream in that row i want to quickly add that when this
update rolled out it actually reset my filters so that no longer am i sorting by high to low
i'm sorting by recommended i've asked around and it seems like this is the case for most people
i'm wondering whether or not twitch is going to start defaulting more towards using recommended
rather than high to low and if that is the case that's quite cool but i don't know if this is
a specific choice to default to recommended but it's interesting nonetheless to look at
so that is how a category looks now on twitch but the second major place that has changed is
actually on the twitch front page normally on the twitch front page if you were to click on
a stream it would take you directly to that stream however now when you click on a stream instead it
actually pops open that little recommended category and lets you preview the streams
in it for example if i were to click on a stream under the recommended section on my home page
it'll actually show me the preview for all of the different recommended streams that are there on
the home page so what is a stream preview well it doesn't matter if you're on the homepage or
the category when you click on a stream and you see your preview there are a few things we can do
over on the left you'll see we have the buttons that say join stream follow and then above it
the title of the stream which is nice and big so you know what is happening on that stream
you can see the chat on the right which is great for getting a feel of the community before joining
but the most important part to realize is that you can't just sit there watching the stream preview
forever eventually it will pause and ask you if you want to continue to the stream okay join
the stream properly or you can look at the next stream in the list this is also up in the top left
you can see these little arrows that let you skip over and preview the next stream or you can simply
click on the stream in the bottom row this new system really emphasizes giving browsing viewers
a chance to check out the stream before having to commit to it whereas before you would have
to click on a stream in your big list wherever it was you would go in wait for a pre-roll ad to run
for 30 seconds and then you'd have to see if the content was for you if that content wasn't for
you you would have to back out click on another stream get another 30 second pre-roll ad and then
still have to see if the content was for you until you found an actual streamer you wanted to watch
and often this actually leads to people giving up and just going directly to their favorite streamer
or going to youtube rather than having to try find a stream amongst all the ads
let's talk pros before the major issues you may or may not have noticed the massive pro to this
entire update essentially you do not get a pre-roll ad on the preview window you won't
get any ads until you actually click and join the stream so there is this stat floating around that
devin nash talked about a while back and we all sort of live by it over on twitch and that is the
fact that pre-roll ads can cause one-third of your viewers to leave before even seeing your content
essentially someone clicks your stream gets an ad before they see you or your content and then they
leave while the ad is playing streamers have been begging twitch for a solution to pre-rolls for
years now and i even just made a massive video all about it and the solutions i think we can
use to solve it i'll throw it on the cards if you are interested this new update is a great change
for pre-rolls giving viewers the chance to check you out and potentially get invested and join
your stream or before seeing ads is a massive win for streamers but as with all things in streaming
this isn't a black and white update no matter what stream or twitter or reddit wants to push
the major issue is that this update doesn't solve the kingmaker system in fact this feels
like it actually emphasizes and doubles down on the kingmaker system especially in the categories
by showing the top creators in that little list and making it much harder to scroll
through the category and see other streamers they are essentially pushing viewers to preview only
the top streams which means anyone after those top few rows is even less likely to be seen
than they were before that isn't to say it was very likely to be seen after those top
few rows in the first place though let's be real if you weren't top three to four rows before this
you would struggle to be seen or discovered anyway if you're streaming and hoping to grow
from streaming not from other platforms well this hammers home that you need to be smart about your
category selection to appear at the top of the list no matter what as for the home page changes
though those are awesome i love being able to preview new streams from the home page without
getting an ad this is a huge win for streamers in that regard so final thoughts on all this
before i go have a nap and try get over this cold what action should you take as a streamer now to
capitalize on all of this well i personally think the update does lean more to the positive side
eliminating pre-roll ads for browsing viewers is fantastic obviously people coming directly to your
stream who already know you will get a pre-roll ad anyway but they already know you and are less
likely to leave because of that ad am i going to change how i stream because of this new update
yes i will probably run much less mid-roll ads i run these because they turn off pre-roll ads but
this new system means i don't have to interrupt my viewers as much now i can get people invested
without having to worry about them bouncing i also think it's really important to note the
fact that while previewing the stream you can see that chat on the right as i said earlier
but someone previewing can't actually chat or engage this means i think streamers should always
assume there are a few people previewing their stream they should be focusing on things like
chat engagement polls questions and a lot of ways that you will push people to click
join stream so they can actually engage and use the chat i think an update like this also shows
what we already knew and that is twitch is working on improvements but obviously no update will be
perfect more importantly what do you think do you like the update do you hate it let me know in the
comments i would love to know your thoughts since you guys are the small streamers out there in the
trenches working hard personally i don't see a solution to twitch discovery or a way to beat
the kingmaker system anytime soon to be honest but if you're looking to grow despite that system and
improve your content i do have a video right here that is perfect for you so why not check it out
and improve your stream get more viewers and just have a lovely time i'll see you guys next week
sorry that this video is a little bit all over the place i am very sick i'll catch you later