Though Twitch’s ultimate goal is to make the feed its app’s landing page, it will initially show as a tab.
For the past year, Twitch has been conducting tests on a discovery feed for livestreams and Clips on mobile devices. The purpose of these tests is to provide users with a new method to discover new streamers to follow and, as a result, to encourage them to spend more time on the platform. Since then, the website has made the announcement that it will be making the feature available to all users by the end of this month. Initially, the feed will be presented to users in the mobile application as a new tab. This tab will provide users with the ability to choose between a scrollable feed for livestreams and another feed for clips. In accordance with the implication of their names, the live feed will present users with broadcasts from individuals whom they already follow as well as ongoing streaming from individuals whom they do not follow based on their viewing history. Meanwhile, the Clips stream will be updated with brief excerpts from live broadcasts as they become available.
By tapping on the streamers’ avatars, users will be able to immediately enter theater mode and join ongoing streams that are being broadcast via the live feed. Additionally, Twitch will display the streamer’s live status in the Clips feed, allowing viewers to view them from that location as well. Twitch noted in its statement that the discovery feed would only be aggregating streams and clips from the service, and that producers will not be able to directly contribute content to it. This is just in case there is any confusion about what the discovery feed will be. To put it another way, getting highlighted on the feed is a game of chance, however featured Clips will be given preference over non-featured Clips and vice versa.
Nevertheless, the discovery feed that will be launched this month is not yet in its final shape. During the course of the following month, it is possible that some users may begin to view the feed as their actual home page. This is exactly what Twitch had in mind when it initially conceived of the feature. In the beginning of March, the CEO of the company, Dan Clancy, announced that the mobile app of the service is undergoing its first significant overhaul in years, and that the discovery feed would serve as the new landing page for the app.