It’s been almost a year since Dan Clancy became CEO of Twitch–and now, in an open letter to the platform’s community, he’s laying out plans for the next 12 months.
2023 was a rough time for Twitch, with two rounds of layoffs and several baffling (often quickly reversed) policy changes, plus pressure from competitors like Kick. 2024 hasn’t begun much more auspiciously: the platform laid off 500 staffers in January, and cut services in South Korea due to “prohibitively expensive” operating costs.
“Our priority is to continue to be the best community-centric live streaming service,” Clancy wrote in his letter. “To do that we need to continue to invest in Twitch so that it can evolve and this letter gives an early peek at some of the things we are doing in 2024 to help improve the service to better meet your needs. This isn’t a 100% comprehensive list, but I’m excited to share where Twitch is heading, and I hope it inspires you to keep doing what you do best.”
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Perhaps the biggest news out of this letter is a planned redesign for Twitch’s mobile app, which hasn’t gotten a significant update since 2019 and is–in our experience, at least–much less intuitive than Twitch’s desktop interface.
Clancy said the update (no release date announced) will take Twitch’s TikTok-esque Discover Feed, which is populated by VOD clips from streamers + currently live broadcasts, and set that as the app’s default landing page. Twitch also plans to “rebuild” how users purchase subscriptions, gifts, and Bits on mobile, Clancy said, and will make changes to features like Hype Train “so that they’re optimized for mobile.”
He added that the goal overall is to make the app “a more modern, immersive viewing experience” that will help viewers “quickly see the latest from streamers and you follow and discover new content.”
Discoverability has always been one of Twitch’s biggest challenges. It’s made some moves since Clancy was instated, like introducing the Discover Feed and a Stories feature (which will also be getting updates in 2024, per the letter), but it still struggles to drive growth for creators.
And it appears to recognize that. Clancy said Twitch is planning to improve streamers’ chances of reaching new viewers in two more ways:
- by introducing an option for both streamers and viewers to export stream clips directly to Instagram
- and by improving its co-streaming feature Stream Together. “We’re making it easier and more intuitive to get set up, and to spontaneously find and collaborate with other streamers on Twitch. We’ll also be adding ways to merge chats and combine viewership so you can create unique and fun cross-community moments together with other streamers,” he wrote.
There are changes coming to Twitch’s community-building features, too, like “new milestones and rewards that your community can unlock by cheering, gifting, or subscribing,” Clancy said. Also, Hype Train is getting an update, and there will be “new types of interactions with Bits to evolve cheering.”
Twitch didn’t announce specific release dates for any of these updates, but they’ll all roll out sometime in 2024–and so will an increase in sub prices, which already happened in Australia, Canada, the U.K., and Turkey, and will happen in more countries later this year, Clancy said.
Clancy closed by announcing he intends to continue personally traveling around to meet face-to-face with Twitch streamers. He met with more than 80 in his first few months as CEO, and said those interactions are “invaluable in helping me understand many of the challenges that you face.”
