- I just got back TwitchCon last night.
I had an amazing time, still struggling with the jetlag,
but I wanted to get a video up talking about
some of the new features that Twitch have announced
coming to their platform in the next six months.
I think there's some really exciting stuff in here,
both for streamers and for viewers of Twitch.
So I wanted to get an upload out as soon as I got back,
so this is that video.
If you see me looking across at my phone during this video,
that's purely just because I wrote down a load of notes
as the keynote was happening live at TwitchCon.
I want to make sure that I don't miss any of the feature
or any of the nuances around the features.
Let's just dive straight in with
the ad experience improvements.
From the next two weeks,
affiliates are also going to be able to earn
a share of advertiser revenue,
which means that when an advert runs on your channel
or you run it an you're an affiliate,
you will make a share of that money that Twitch is making
from the advert.
This previously just used to be for partners only,
but starting in the next two weeks,
it's also going to be available for affiliates.
Pairing with that,
they are no longer going to me showing adverts
on non-affiliated or non-partnered streams.
If you are a viewer and you're watching a stream
and that stream runs an advert,
you know that that stream is making some money
from that advert running.
Affiliates and partners will also have the option
to be able to disable pre-roll adverts on their channel
by running regular ad breaks.
It's up for discussion as to how regular
this ad break needs to be to disable these
pre-roll adverts, but the one screen show I've seen
shows that it's disabled for about 20 minutes
after running an advert in their stream.
This is particularly good for new people arriving
at streams, they shouldn't get a pre-roll
every single time.
One of the really cool updates in the ad experience
is they're going to be introducing something called
Picture by Picture, very similar to Picture in Picture,
if you've ever worked with video before.
Basically what's going to happen is when,
as a streamer, you run an advert,
your stream actually does not cut to the advert,
instead your stream will go up into the top corner
of the chat and then the advert will play
in the video's place.
This just means that the viewers don't actually
have a break from your stream.
Your stream just goes into the top corner
so they can see that they're not missing anything.
They can still see what's happening in your stream
whilst the advert runs.
They've also finally fixed the audio levels of adverts.
They've normalized them so you should no longer,
as a viewer, have the experience where you're watching
a streamer at a medium volume and all of a sudden
you get a super loud advert that seems to have
come out of no where.
They've now apparently normalized all advert volumes
and they will be normalized with the actual stream
that you're watching.
The final improvement in terms of adverts
is that you should, as a streamer,
eventually be able to see an estimated payout
for running an advert.
If you're a larger streamer with a big audience,
before running an advert you should be able to see
an estimate as to how much running an advert
would make you based on the number of viewers you've got
and that demographic.
The second major update that Twitch announced at TwitchCon
is the new channel pages.
Now some of these updates have already gone live,
but as you can see from this screenshot,
there's still a long ways to go.
There are going to be sections where you, as a streamer,
can add information about yourself,
you can add all your social media links there,
you can even put your schedule up without
needing a third party extension so people
can come to your channel and see what you're streaming
on certain days and what time you're going to be going live.
You can even upload a channel trailer.
Something similar to what you've been able to do
on YouTube so when people arrive at your channel
and you're not even live,
they can see a short one to two minute
what you're all about video.
This should remove the need to have so many panels
below your streams since you can be able to include
about me information, social media links,
your schedule, all actually into your channel page.
These changes are probably coming later next year,
no real update as to when exactly that will be.
The third update that we'll talk about is Mod View,
which is a new channel layout,
basically just for moderators.
It'll allow them to take actions based on the viewers
or the people talking in chat in your channel
much much easier.
Things like being able to see all the messages
that are flagged by Auto-Mod or see which
of the moderators are online,
or even just list the moderator actions
that have been taken on the channel recently.
You can add all of these kind of things
and sort of choose the layout yourself as a moderator.
Now the Mod-View is going to be available from Spring 2020,
so still a little while off on that.
Next up we have the new creator dashboard.
This is an update to the current Creator Dashboard,
which isn't exactly the most easy to use thing ever.
This new Creator Dashboard will allow you to be able to
customize exactly what buttons and controls
you want on your Dashboard whilst you are live.
Much bigger buttons and options to clip recent moments
from your stream or run adverts or change chat mode.
All these kind of things should be much easier to do
and you can actually customize which buttons
you want available for yourself as a creator.
There'll also apparently be some new tips,
sort of a stream assistant for new streamers,
sort of guide you through what all these controls can do.
The new Creator Dashboard is apparently launching
in October.
The fifth update that we're going to be talking about
is the new Twitch studio.
If you followed my on Twitter or you follow Twitch
on Twitter,
you should've seen that they announced
they're new streaming software a couple months ago.
I still haven't been able to test it unfortunately,
but they did have some ability to test it at TwitchCon.
Apparently the new Twitch Studio is going to be really simple
to set up for new streamers.
It's going to have some easy to use templates
that you can customize things like the colors
as well as the layout of certain things in your stream.
Twitch Studio is going to be launching in November.
I'm not sure if that's full launch
or if it's just going to be open access from November
still during testing,
but it certainly looks like a useful tool
for new streamers.
If you are a heavy watcher of Twitch
and you watch some of the bigger streamers,
you might've seen this next feature
that already rolled out to some of the bigger channels.
It's called Channel Points and it's essentially a way
for affiliates and partners to be able to reward
loyal customers of their community,
people that are watching their stream often,
not necessarily the people that subscribe
and things like that,
but you can actually base certain rewards on watch time.
You can actually choose what you want your viewers
to be able to unlock with actions like watch time,
so they can maybe unlock some Tier One emotes
or highlight a message to you or reward the viewer
in some way as a streamer based on something
as simple as them watching your stream.
Although this has been rolled out for some bigger channels
for a bit of time whilst they've been testing it,
it's going to be coming to all affiliates and partners
from January.
The next thing we'll talk about is the Twitch rebranding
that went on.
It wasn't actually really announced at TwitchCon,
but it went live the day before TwitchCon started,
so I'm sure by now some of you have been able to
experience the new update.
There's a new word mock, a new glitch logo,
it's only slightly changed thankfully
since some people literally and physically
have that tattooed on their body.
Some of the color palette has changed.
The Twitch purple has changed ever so slightly.
There's also 24 new colors in that palette,
so they're trying to move away from just a purely purple
design-aesthetic and actually give some level
of customization to the creator.
For example now when you mouse over somebody's
thumbnail preview of their live stream,
the video previews will move up and to the right slightly
and you get a colored border of your stream.
You, as the streamer,
can customize and choose what that color looks like.
You can have some kind of brand aesthetic applied
to your thumbnails.
That's called the Creator Color,
apparently it can be found in your settings.
It shows up in thumbnails, browse pages,
and even message notifications in chat.
Those new features, along with a new font,
that you might have seen in Twitch chat
are just sort of the direction that Twitch
is taking their rebranding.
I think we're on feature number eight now.
That is polls that Twitch have announced.
You can actually ask your audience questions
whilst you are live from your stream
and it's integrated directly into the chat.
Usually people using other extensions
or something like strawpoll for this,
now it's going to be directly implemented into your chat.
You can ask your viewers questions and they can vote on it
within a certain time limit.
You'll also have some options to be able to allow for
subscribers to have a higher vote count,
so their votes count double or something like that.
I believe you'll also be able to disable that.
I'm sure you will be able to if you want to run
just a completely fair poll on your chat.
Like I said, it's for affiliates and partners
and it's launching in October.
Along with polls, they announced something called
Hype Train.
This is going to allow viewers to use bits and subs
to get a fun and rewarding community celebration.
I don't know exactly what this means at the moment.
It's sort of a way to encourage your viewers
to support the channel all within a certain time limit
to, in some way, unlock a fun and rewarding celebration.
I'm not sure what that means exactly,
if it's going to allow for certain emotes to be used,
or if it's going to do something actually on your stream.
I'm not completely sure,
but they haven't released much about this
other than one quick image about Hype Train.
The Hype Train we don't have the month for,
but apparently all of those updates
are coming later this year.
The final update that we're going to talk about
is that subscriptions are now available
on iPhones and iPads, so iOS.
So many people now are watching streams from their phones,
so if you're using an iOS device,
you can now support your favorite streamers
by subscribing directly from your phone.
My update, nothing to do with Twitch platform,
but they also announced that the new TwitchCon dates
have been announced.
TwitchCon in Europe will be taking place in Amsterdam
May the second and third.
TwitchCon in San Diego next year will be
September 25th to the 27th.
It's going to be in San Diego,
I imagine the exact same convention center.
It was a really great venue this year.
I've heard rumors that they've actually got
a three year deal there,
so not only 2020, but also 2021 will be in San Diego.
We don't have the dates for that year,
but for next year it will be the 25th through the 27th,
so if you want to start looking at hotels and flights
a year in advance, you can do.
I appreciate that we rattled through that
at quite a pace,
but I wanted to get a quick update video out
with all of the new features that Twitch have announced,
exactly like I did last year.
That video seemed to do pretty well,
so I just wanted to share that with you
in case you didn't see the keynote
or you weren't following Twitch on social media.
Finally I want to give a massive thanks to everybody
that I met at TwitchCon this year.
It's just the most unreal experience
being able to walk around and meet so many people
from the community.
Thank you if you stopped me on the floor
if you came to either of the events
that I had at Elgato or at Streamlabs.
I really appreciate it.
If you are new to the Gaming Careers YouTube channel,
I would highly recommend checking out
the rest of our content.
We have loads of live streaming guides for you
if you're just getting start
or if you've been at it for a while,
definitely hit the notification bells
so you don't miss an upload.
A final thanks to my patrons this month
who've helped support the channel.
I really appreciate all the support.
I will see you guys in the next video.
Peace.