Being a Twitch streamer isn’t always easy, particularly for small Twitch streamers. Many streamers put in hundreds of hours before building even a small audience. Building from a small audience upwards can be even more challenging. Twitch, as a platform, is tasked with helping build those megastar Twitch streamers of tomorrow. Sometimes that involves major feature changes, but more often than not it comes down to smaller, more personal improvements. For example, Twitch’s new way to highlight first-time chatters.
Even as a small Twitch streamer, it’s no simple task to distinguish new viewers from past viewers. Yet even a brief interaction with a new viewer can lead to a long-term supporter. That’s what New Follower and New Subscriber notifications do so well. Twitch is now enabling Twitch streamers, particularly small-to-medium-sized streamers, a new opportunity to connect with viewers. Using this feature, Twitch streamers will be able to see when a viewer posts to their Twitch chat for the very first time.
If turned on in a Twitch streamer’s settings, first-time chatters will have their messages highlighted as part of their typical Twitch chat scrawl. The message will have a different color than normal chat and will have the tag “First Time Chat from viewer” above it. The message will only be viewable by the Twitch streamer and their mods, so there’s no need to worry about privacy issues.
Streamers will be able to use this information to engage viewers trying to participate for the very first time. A Twitch chatter who goes unnoticed is that much more likely to stop watching when compared to a chatter who gets an acknowledgment from the Twitch streamer. This one small notification can help small Twitch streamers grow their communities that much faster. Even larger streamers can have their mods focus on engaging with first-time commenters to help grow their viewership.
Of course, if a Twitch streamer believes these types of highlights would be too distracting, or for large streamers who can no longer dedicate the time to keying into individual chatters, the feature can be turned off. There’s a toggle in the Twitch streamer’s settings that will return chat to normalcy.
That’s just one example of how a small feature can have a significant impact on a Twitch streamer’s community. Months of engaging with new chatters, one by one, has the potential to grow viewership over time. Even if it’s just a “Hello, viewer!” a Twitch streamer could potentially create a fan with ease.
