Twitch has just added stories as a brand-new feature to their platform and this article will cover everything you need to know about them. We will discuss what they are, how to make them and why streamers might want to.
What are Twitch Stories?
In Twitch’s own words: “‘Stories’ is a new way for streamers to stay connected with their Twitch community, even when they’re not live”. Stories are short videos or photos that can be posted by a streamer to their followers.
Whilst anyone on the mobile app can view the stories of creators they follow, the creation of stories is limited to streamers who are qualified partners or affiliates. Twitch stories can be created using images from your phone’s gallery, clips, new photos, or canvas backgrounds.
How to make Twitch Stories
To create a story, you can simply click the ‘My Story’ button on the following tab of the mobile app. Alternatively, you can enter creator mode via the ‘Create’ button in the top right of the screen and press the purple ‘+’ icon at the bottom of the screen and select Story. Once you post a story, a push notification will be sent to your followers. If you have at least 30 subscribers, you can post a story for only your subscribers to see.
What are Twitch Stories for?
The new stories feature has faced a mixed response from the community. On the one hand, some are critical of the introduction of a new and generic feature. In their article, Polygon talked about how this feature is an example of the trend in platforms being less and less unique. Other users are frustrated at the release of a seemingly generic feature when they can identify many glaring issues with the platform that they would rather Twitch spent their time addressing. One popular streamer, EsfandTV, replied to the announcement saying that he wished Twitch focused more on improving the user experience before adding more features.
On the other hand, creators are presented with a new way to engage with their audience and encourage subscriptions. Streamers can continue to create content when they are unable to stream at their setups and send push notifications to their followers to increase engagement and interact further with their community. Furthermore, more value can be added to a subscription through sub-only stories.
Time will tell what impact this new feature will have and it will be interesting to observe which streamers make use of stories and what impact this has on their growth and community engagement.
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