Twitch rolls out Discovery Feed feature to boost streamer engagement on the mobile app

Live-streaming service Twitch has announced that it is rolling out a new feature called Discovery Feed. As the name implies, Discovery Feed aims to boost the discoverability of content creators by allowing users access to previews of streams in one go. On paper, this is supposed to increase the chances for potential viewers to find a channel they like without going through pre-roll ads.

The feature will be coming to the mobile Twitch app with an update, and all users should get access by the end of the week.

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Twitch's Discovery Feed allows users to view previews of streams without pre-roll ads

Twitch hosts millions of streamers from around the world. However, a major criticism from smaller content creators has been its lack of discoverability. For context, before Discovery Feed, the home page and other category pages usually filter streams based on viewership numbers, burying new streamers towards the bottom.

While there was a recommended tab to help users look over channels they don't follow, the mobile app was severely deficient in this aspect, lacking features from the desktop website.

Another thing to consider is the fact that most streams have pre-roll ads enabled when someone clicks on their channels. This severely impacts viewership retention as most users would be reluctant to watch an ad on a channel they are checking out for the first time.

With the new feed, much like on social media platforms such as X or Instagram, Twitch viewers will now be able to watch a short preview of the live channel without an ad. This allows them to look at the content from the streamer without any interruption for a short while.

This is a vast improvement on the older system and will allow potential viewers to sift through many channels as they browse for content to watch.

That said, ads are not entirely gone from the Discovery Feed. As noted by the official announcement on X, the page will still feature advertisements, but they will be scrollable and, therefore, will not hinder playback of the previews:

"There will be ads between content in your feed, but these ads will be scrollable, just like all feed content. We’ll be experimenting with more changes to the feed, ads, and the mobile experience soon"

As Twitch notes, Discovery Feed is still going through development as the platform experiment with the feature. Only time will tell if it helps streamers as a lack of discoverability and a large number of ads have been the top complaint of the userbase.