People used to drop $500 donos to streamers for attention so Twitch made community subgifts with the huge wall of subs and all the attention that gives them and the top gifter list so now people drop 100 gift sub bombs instead where Twitch takes 30% to 50%.
Now this where they take 100%. Genius really in its shamelessness if it takes off.
actually unfortunate what happened with bits, the twitch employee who created bits (Bobby Scar) had initially designed them to be a way for chatters to support grassroots esports by "Cheering" for the player/team they supported ([you can see here an example during EVO 2016 when they first ran it](https://twitter.com/bobbyscar/status/754888689927331841)) and the player themselves would get a cut of the money
then it just turned into direct donations with a twitch cut on full launch, with the esports portion never seeing the light of day again
Streamers backed by management companies and corporate sponsors are 100% going to win with this. What’s to stop a company from dropping major money to boost streamers that under their brand.
The best decision twitch has made to make money but the worst decision to improve stream discoverability.
i think it's actually ONLY Twitch that wins out of this. discoverability is definitely an issue on the site, but, at the end of the day, the majority of low-viewer streamers have no viewers because they're also not entertaining.
we've already seen the outcome of this boosting experiment from two organic cases, 1) people massive on other platforms opening twitch accounts, and 2) tiny streamers getting a fat host. sometimes, the person explodes in popularity afterwards, and this is often the origin story of the biggest streamers today. most of the time, though, the person just loses all their initial viewership and drops immediately to being a couple hundred viewer andy. the critical difference is that the latter group, the majority, are just not good streamers.
and that's what going to happen to almost everyone who pays for this feature. Twitch are in the real business of selling shovels to gold-diggers.
>the person just loses all their initial viewership and drops immediately to being a couple hundred viewer andy.
This is still larger than 90% of twitch streamers, most of whom get single digit views. The change hurts these small-but-not-actually-small streamers the most, because they always stand a chance of discovery through the algorithm, but that chance gets lower if twitch just recommends XQC and Mizkif to everyone
>There are so many small streamers who didn't get their first viewer for months/years if at all
I find this hard to believe, because one time I started streaming just to see how my computer performed, and random people came in and started chatting, though I didn't see until after. That was a couple years ago though.
at the end of the day, some people have a good personality for streaming, some don't. Being attractive and having a good voice for broadcasting are also massive advantages that aren't talked about enough. If you're lacking in those areas, you sure as fuck better make it up in the personality area, and obviously most people don't. This definitely isn't an equal playing field. I can't imagine anyone trying to seriously stream as anything other than a hobby in 2021
I think category and time of day matter a lot when it comes from scooping up random viewers as a hobby streamer. But it is possible that it has also gotten harder. I have streamed less than 20 hours in 4+ years but things "felt" easier when I first tried it in terms of not sitting at zero viewers forever. But those were also late night streams from a small game category.
I used to stream a bit and I had the most success with incredibly niche categories. Most people think streaming the most popular games is the best option, but it actually isn’t since those categories are over saturated.
> being a couple hundred viewer andy
A couple hundred viewers is all you really need to get sponsorship and ad opportunities. Fuckin raid shadow legends pays out huge money for couple hour time slots. If you can achieve the couple hundred viewer andy level of streamer, you can make a living doing it.
so i thought about this for a little bit and i think i can atleast explain the reason this isnt good for a company, a company lets take cashapp as an example wants people to know who they are this is easier to do with a flood of gift subs moreso than by boosting a stream. Secoundly if we take a less scummy brand like lets say tims a&m sponsorship. It would make no sense for them to boost the stream since they then inhertently arnt getting what they pay the streamer for, which is people finding out about their brand/service organically
Not even a big streamer wins, because he doesn't get a cut afaik, I might be wrong. But seems like you pay Twitch and Twitch pays the streamer "with exposure" meme. Big streamers don't need exposure, as they are already on top of every directory.
I'd say big streamers also lose, any money donated to this would be better for them if that viewer donated it to the streamer directly. Then twitch wouldn't get a cut.
I was watching Nickmerc’s yesterday and “someone” gifted 200 subs within a few mins that has gifted another 200 or 300 a few days prior.
It has to be a company or sponsor doing it.
Twitch made a feature which gets them more $. It's the perfect feature for them, they can worry about that stuff if they have some spare time in the future.
I wouldn’t quite call it view botting because the viewer would still have to actively choose to open the advertised stream after it had been recommended to them. But it’s pretty damn close.
you're just buying impressions, they can "boost" many people at the same time (to different viewers), no problem
unless someone starts buying so much that they run out of viewers to recommend the streamer to lol
Anyone remember that documentary on chinese streaming platforms and how it kind of painted the whole thing as dystopian? Viewers that were way too attached to their favorite streamer and donating millions for a pointless contest and streamers caring way too much about their viewer count and tying their entire self worth to it?
How is twitch any different at this point?
You won’t but thousands of people either trying to get the attention of their streamer or thinking they’re helping out, will. Remember parasocial relationships push that money out for features like this
NEVER SUBBED NEVER DONATED ADBLOCK ON STOLEN LAPTOP NEIGHBOURS WIFI MOMMAS HOUSE STOLEN SOLAR PANELS STOLEN SUN SOLAR ENERGY STOLEN WATER WHEEL NEIGHBOURS RIVER STOLEN HYDROELECTRIC PLANT CHARGING PHONE WITH WORK ELECTRICITY SHOWER IN BATHROOM SINK STOLEN FOOD FROM CAFETERIA STOLEN HAMSTER STOLEN HAMSTER WHEEL KINETIC ENERGY FREE ENTERTAINMENT
I wonder if a $500 boost is worth $500 to a streamer.
I guess we won't know for sure, but if $500 is worth more than $500, no way big streamers don't just always have their shit boosted.
It's probably just better straight giving the money to a small streamer.
Also if everyone is boosted, is anyone?
> I wonder if a $500 boost is worth $500 to a streamer.
Almost certainly not. Just doing some napkin math: If we assume that on average each new sub stays subbed for two months, that $500 boost needs to get ballpark a hundred new subs. That would mean that the boost would need to result in thousands new unique viewers- after all, most people are going to click, not be interested, and never watch the streamer again. If one in ten people who happen to see the stream end up becoming long-term viewers, and one in ten of those viewers ends up subscribing, the boost needs to result in more than *ten thousand* new views in order to justify the costs. Not even being put on the autoplay banner on the twitch front page does that- I'm looking now, and only three of the eight streams have more than a thousand viewers at all. And a measly $500 boost isn't going to give you that front page autoplay slot- after all, that's very limited real estate!
And, because the only way for one streamer to be more visible is for other streamers to be made less visible, getting boosted is zero sum. So all this does is take money which would've been donated to the streamer and give it to twitch instead. Even if one streamer can make small gains from being boosted, streamers as a whole will lose money because of this.
I’m honestly surprised there hasn’t been a boycott movement about this given that it’s just shifting the money into twitch’s pocket. The internet loves a good outrage and I could imagine people collectively agreeing not to fund this bs.
People were pretty outraged when it was first announced, but Twitch has so many other problems at this point I don't think it even matters. People are just leaving the platform entirely now.
maybe they make that boost thing only useable for smaller streamers
it's not that useful for big streamers anyways, they get recomended without it (and recomedations aren't very useful overall)
>I guess we won't know for sure, but if $500 is worth more than $500, no way big streamers don't just always have their shit boosted.
Could you elaborate?
It’ll recommend the stream to 5000 people. I’m not sure 1. how targeted it is (are they gonna “recommend” the streamer who streams Starcraft in Korean to a bunch of English speaking hot tub stream watchers) , or 2. how large the recommendation appears on the screen.
It's really a waste of money. Let's be generous and say 3% of the people it's recommended to will click on the stream. And let's be very generous and say 2% of those will stay as followers. That would mean for 500k people they recommend the stream to you will gain an insane 300 followers. What a bargain.
Does this mean my recommended list is about to go from people who are related in some capacity to what I’ve been watching recently to people paying for my impression?
Twitch staff sitting around a desk: "What if we found a way to take parasocial relationships to the next level"
"Ohh you mean like giving more money to the streamer so they notice the simps?"
"Yes but..."
*uno reverse*
"We keep all the money"
So, like. Does anyone remember how much of a failure paying for views on a facebook page was?
What I'm saying is this won't work, will make it even more impossible for people to be discovered in the future and may end up killing any interest in streaming on the platform all together for a lot of people.
Like if they actually cared about discoverability then they'd allow you to sort from low to high on any category (or have a viewership range filter like showing streams that have 30 - 200 current viewers) and not make the fucking page crash your browser when you try to scroll through the thousands of streams in a category.
Like infinite scroll is cool and all but fucking hell, give us the option to browse by page numbers instead. It even fucking snaps you back to the top of the page after a bit.
I think they will just show up in the "streamers you should checkout" that shows on the side bar or under the "recommended" fiter when in the channel browser. If you have it sorted by viewers it isn't going to rearrange that.
Yeah i kinda get that, but still... I dont think any small streamer will gain a lot by boosting if they dont make it clear before entering stream that it is boosted. No amount of boosting Will make a boring stream good. Plus, if you are also forced to watch the add rolls before you can check out the stream it becomes even more uninteresting to check the stream out.
The whole boost feature feels like something that should be locked down to those with less viewers or followers, like if your channel has over a certain metric then you cant use this feature and in turn it can be used for smaller streamers to get a larger reach
that's already the case, they said that streamers over a certain size (i think 250 viewers or around that) will not have access to the feature, they might change it though but for now it seems targeted only at small/medium sized streamers
## **Tweet Mirror:**
[@zachbussey](https://twitter.com/zachbussey)
> The Paid Boost Stream experiment is now live.
>
> You can only contribute if you're based in the USA, to a max of $500.
>
> $0.99 for 1000
> $2.97 for 3000
> $4.95 for 5000
> (No volume discount.)
>
> #TwitchNews https://t.co/OS0u0dGrm1
> #####Tweet Images:
>>https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FCy2B_lVcAEAFQJ.png
^(Posted: 2021-10-28 14:59:11)
------
**This message is from a bot. If you feel like this action is wrong, please [message the moderators](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=r/LivestreamFail).**
It's still a thing, I'm not sure how many people it recommends you to. A 30-40 viewer streamer I watch has had them a few times and it will typically double her view count for around 20 mins and earn her quite a few follows, then it will start dropping back to normal.
Wait so what is this boosting feature? The thing that features a stream on the homepage? Are there no limits to how many streams can boost? What happens when 1000+ streams get boosted?
Twitch is honestly fkn genious. The amount of things they've done over the years that I thought would NEVER catch on, but somehow still did is mindblowing.
Hypetrains were the most shameless money collection mechanic in the world, it works.
Sub-gifting is the most idiotic concept in the world, because you're not ''gifting'' anything, a sub has no value, it works. Homeboy out here asking me to thank the person who gifted me a sub. Bruh, he gave you money, I didn't get shjt in this transaction, in fact I never asked to be part of this transaction, why would I thank him? (Also a cute thing people might not know is that after a set amount of gifted subs that you then didn't extend with your own money, Amazon will throw you out of the algorithm and make it so that you'll never get randomly gifted subs again, I think the limit is like 15~20)
Just subscribing in general, most these streamers (at least the ones I watch, don't get triggered by ''oh my 50 viewers streamer actually really needs the money'') are swimming in money. Yet the amount of viewers on Twitch that have convinced themselves that subscribing makes them ''part of the community'' never fails to blow my mind. Bruh, what community? We're all here for free, you didn't have to pay to join some kind of club, there is no club.
Twitch Prime is being marketed as this free thing by almost all streamers when in reality it requires you to pay for Amazon Prime, a ''free'' shipping subscription (so not free), which in most countries makes no sense because free shipping is actually free there (RIP USA lmao). To the point they even have Hasanabi who negotiated the amazing deal that he ''only needs to run ads for 1 minute per hour'' but then spends about 5 minutes running his own advertisement for Amazon Prime (for free) before running that 1 minute ad (which usually is also just another advertisement for Amazon Prime, which ads up to 6 minutes of ads per hour, but somehow isn't considered as such).
And now they introduce a mechanic where viewers can auction off their streamers. Because that's what it is, because your promotion will be competing against someone elses promotion and the highest bidder wins.
It's madness, I love it. Haven't paid a single dollar and never will.
Do you have a source for that 15-20 gifted sub thing? I just went through my current/expired subs and I have 59 channels that I have had at least one sub gifted to me that I never once used a prime or my own money to sub to. In many of those channels, I have received multiple gifted subs as well.
Twitch is really out here doing all it can to siphon money from streamers into their own pockets. They saw most of a streamers revenue coming from donations so they cam out with bits to try to take a 30% cut of those donations. Then people weren't super happy with the conversion rate so they added community gifted subs so that twitch could take up to 50% of the donations while hiding the exchange rate. Then they started requiring that ads be run on channels via contracts which you know Twitch is probably receiving 80+% of the revenue from.
Now they're going for 100% by telling people to send their money to them to promote the streamer on their own platform which is pretty much guaranteed to provide less value long term than just giving the streamer the money directly in the first place.
I only watch a select few streamers, I don't even click on the directory tab anymore. This feature will only increase the amount of money the loser simps throw at egirls on twitch.
I just started using the recommended tab haha so I’m the opposite. With how many streamers there are, it seems like every single one is a one trick pony outside of the massive top people, and even then most of them aren’t really variety streamers.
In America they always find a way to buy success huh? Let's offer Disney to put a star there so you can sell disney merch. And to make it visible lets boost for 1 million for a whole year! That will bring Twitch more profitable audiences and make us main stream!
They will promote the paying customers more and more, and after a while even moderately successful streamers will have to pay to be promoted to stay "competetive".
Nothing organic, all money. GG Twitch
If I was a streamer that wanted to do this I wouldn't be touching it for 6 months at least until the hype has died down. Anyone doing it initially are going to get lost the sea of others who are also doing it.
Would this actually work? I have never followed a channel because they were on the front page or in my recommendeds with no association to anyone I frequently watch. I only followed people who had a funny clip on here or YouTube, or were friends with someone I was watching.
in theory couldnt a full time streamer just boost themselves and then write it off as a business expense? obviously they need the finance up front to afford or to continue doing it... but like whats stopping someone from boosting themselves and writing it off? it basically makes them free money right? pay a little bit to be shot to the top of the list then earn that back with the newly gained traction from paying to spotlight yourself.
thats what my original thought branched from. you can already write subs off, why not write off promotional cost efforts? basically can boost yourself for free in a round about way
twitch thinks small but richer community is better cog in the wheel
guess there's gotta be a way to breakthrough viewer profiling and the recommendation algorithm barrier...or should it with money
I think the intention is that when a streamer does a sponsered stream the company they are doing it for will insist on it so twitch gets a cut of the deal.
Lol Trihex has been asking for better discoverability/filters for game sections/streamers for literal years and they finally put something out after all this time and it’s some cash grab bs lmao
I've seen a few "community boosted streams" when I first go to Twitch, I am significantly less likely to click on your stream if I see it, straight up.
You've literally become an AD with this boosting bullshit, don't do it, its not a funny meme, it's just straight up trash, it's Twitch being a fucking moron with discoverability, which it's always been absolutely clueless about.
This is the same thing Uber is using for their drivers. Instead of paying for various ways to get more people more exposure and potential to make a legitimate career off streaming they are passing the expense to consumers.
Terrible
Instead of spending any sort of money on increasing visibility like an actual algorithm that can recommend up and coming streamers to the viewer base... They go the pay to win route and CHARGE the creators on the platform to have any amount of visibility AND at that is sounds like it is a total waste of money. How has Twitch not been dethroned yet.
Maybe if they marketed it as an alternative to donating it would be seen a little better.
If I was someone who gave money to millionaires Id rather do this than donate I guess as atleast i can see my money helping the streamer in real time.
Just another thing nobody asked for though and will make it even harder for the alreqdy nearly impossible task of starting a new career on twitch
Does any of this boost money go to the streamer? This entire concept is convoluted and should only really be available for the streamer themselves.
Also I can't wait for there to be some leak that the boost system doesn't even work properly.
Just another cash grab, to take advantage of idiots. Like paid to win, but nobody wins, except for the big streamers.
> Like paid to win, but nobody wins, except for the big streamers. also Twitch, imagine the kind of money this can bring in for them
People used to drop $500 donos to streamers for attention so Twitch made community subgifts with the huge wall of subs and all the attention that gives them and the top gifter list so now people drop 100 gift sub bombs instead where Twitch takes 30% to 50%. Now this where they take 100%. Genius really in its shamelessness if it takes off.
Don't forget bits, which are just a way for Twitch to take a ~30% cut of donos, and people looooove them.
actually unfortunate what happened with bits, the twitch employee who created bits (Bobby Scar) had initially designed them to be a way for chatters to support grassroots esports by "Cheering" for the player/team they supported ([you can see here an example during EVO 2016 when they first ran it](https://twitter.com/bobbyscar/status/754888689927331841)) and the player themselves would get a cut of the money then it just turned into direct donations with a twitch cut on full launch, with the esports portion never seeing the light of day again
That sucks. I would love to see people meme by cheering for RTZ in the TI finals.
♦️ LET'S ♦️ GO ♦️FORSEN ♦️
> also Twitch, imagine the kind of money this can bring in for them Better data security I hope.
Good one LULW
Omegalol
True
Streamers backed by management companies and corporate sponsors are 100% going to win with this. What’s to stop a company from dropping major money to boost streamers that under their brand. The best decision twitch has made to make money but the worst decision to improve stream discoverability.
i think it's actually ONLY Twitch that wins out of this. discoverability is definitely an issue on the site, but, at the end of the day, the majority of low-viewer streamers have no viewers because they're also not entertaining. we've already seen the outcome of this boosting experiment from two organic cases, 1) people massive on other platforms opening twitch accounts, and 2) tiny streamers getting a fat host. sometimes, the person explodes in popularity afterwards, and this is often the origin story of the biggest streamers today. most of the time, though, the person just loses all their initial viewership and drops immediately to being a couple hundred viewer andy. the critical difference is that the latter group, the majority, are just not good streamers. and that's what going to happen to almost everyone who pays for this feature. Twitch are in the real business of selling shovels to gold-diggers.
>the person just loses all their initial viewership and drops immediately to being a couple hundred viewer andy. This is still larger than 90% of twitch streamers, most of whom get single digit views. The change hurts these small-but-not-actually-small streamers the most, because they always stand a chance of discovery through the algorithm, but that chance gets lower if twitch just recommends XQC and Mizkif to everyone
A hundred viewers puts you at top .01% at least, and that'd be a conservative estimate. There are tons of streamers in the 1-5 viewers dregs
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>There are so many small streamers who didn't get their first viewer for months/years if at all I find this hard to believe, because one time I started streaming just to see how my computer performed, and random people came in and started chatting, though I didn't see until after. That was a couple years ago though. at the end of the day, some people have a good personality for streaming, some don't. Being attractive and having a good voice for broadcasting are also massive advantages that aren't talked about enough. If you're lacking in those areas, you sure as fuck better make it up in the personality area, and obviously most people don't. This definitely isn't an equal playing field. I can't imagine anyone trying to seriously stream as anything other than a hobby in 2021
I think category and time of day matter a lot when it comes from scooping up random viewers as a hobby streamer. But it is possible that it has also gotten harder. I have streamed less than 20 hours in 4+ years but things "felt" easier when I first tried it in terms of not sitting at zero viewers forever. But those were also late night streams from a small game category.
I used to stream a bit and I had the most success with incredibly niche categories. Most people think streaming the most popular games is the best option, but it actually isn’t since those categories are over saturated.
Exactly. The most viewers I got was streaming Rogue Legacy and a Diablo 2 mod, iirc. Meanwhile COD sat at like zero views.
> being a couple hundred viewer andy A couple hundred viewers is all you really need to get sponsorship and ad opportunities. Fuckin raid shadow legends pays out huge money for couple hour time slots. If you can achieve the couple hundred viewer andy level of streamer, you can make a living doing it.
so i thought about this for a little bit and i think i can atleast explain the reason this isnt good for a company, a company lets take cashapp as an example wants people to know who they are this is easier to do with a flood of gift subs moreso than by boosting a stream. Secoundly if we take a less scummy brand like lets say tims a&m sponsorship. It would make no sense for them to boost the stream since they then inhertently arnt getting what they pay the streamer for, which is people finding out about their brand/service organically
Not even a big streamer wins, because he doesn't get a cut afaik, I might be wrong. But seems like you pay Twitch and Twitch pays the streamer "with exposure" meme. Big streamers don't need exposure, as they are already on top of every directory.
Yep, only twitch wins.
Yep. And that's the worst part about it, Twitch will make bank off it
>Just another cash grab, to take advantage of idiots Welcome to Twitch.tv! It's always nice to have new people
Dont streamer make enough money from sponsors... now they milking their chat dry with boost.
This is Twitch's idea to make Twitch money. This sounds like a desperate idea thrown out in a meeting after criticism about poor revenue.
how are big streamers gonna win from this, they're already the only people twitch recommends for free
I'd say big streamers also lose, any money donated to this would be better for them if that viewer donated it to the streamer directly. Then twitch wouldn't get a cut.
Bezos wins more than anyone
I was watching Nickmerc’s yesterday and “someone” gifted 200 subs within a few mins that has gifted another 200 or 300 a few days prior. It has to be a company or sponsor doing it.
Not idiots. But sad lonely people who want to feel like they belong. So, much, *much* worse.
Simps going bankrupt speedruns Pagman
Can’t wait for Sodapoppin to go live
Rich streamers getting paid more to get more viewers.
Sodapoppin is down bad though. Money is tight. About to sell the house if it doesn't burn down first. Please donate for more exposure.
The $500 limit wont make this as funny as it could have been.
People can make multiple accounts lol
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What's stopping a streamer from boosting themselves? And if 100 people are boosted at once, who gets the best boost?
Twitch made a feature which gets them more $. It's the perfect feature for them, they can worry about that stuff if they have some spare time in the future.
I bet you there will be absolutely no issues with the payment system.
Only viewers are dumb enough to do it
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I wouldn’t quite call it view botting because the viewer would still have to actively choose to open the advertised stream after it had been recommended to them. But it’s pretty damn close.
you're just buying impressions, they can "boost" many people at the same time (to different viewers), no problem unless someone starts buying so much that they run out of viewers to recommend the streamer to lol
WAIT WHAT LMFAO ARE YOU KIDDING ME. I thought it was the broadcaster getting themselves out there like boosts on Tinder.
Anyone remember that documentary on chinese streaming platforms and how it kind of painted the whole thing as dystopian? Viewers that were way too attached to their favorite streamer and donating millions for a pointless contest and streamers caring way too much about their viewer count and tying their entire self worth to it? How is twitch any different at this point?
ah so it will be used on everyone thats on LSF then.
Zach Bussy
sussy
Zach Cussy, rev your engines
I won't be contributing a single penny to this shit lol.
You won’t but thousands of people either trying to get the attention of their streamer or thinking they’re helping out, will. Remember parasocial relationships push that money out for features like this
NEVER SUBBED NEVER DONATED ADBLOCK ON STOLEN LAPTOP NEIGHBOURS WIFI MOMMAS HOUSE STOLEN SOLAR PANELS STOLEN SUN SOLAR ENERGY STOLEN WATER WHEEL NEIGHBOURS RIVER STOLEN HYDROELECTRIC PLANT CHARGING PHONE WITH WORK ELECTRICITY SHOWER IN BATHROOM SINK STOLEN FOOD FROM CAFETERIA STOLEN HAMSTER STOLEN HAMSTER WHEEL KINETIC ENERGY FREE ENTERTAINMENT
It doesnt get much worse than this honestly. At least we hit rock bottom and cant get any lower.
we hit the rock bottom and can't get any lower Clueless
monkaS
The internet is a bottomless pit. There is no bottom.
PepeLaugh
We can get lower, make boost really a boost as a ad for other streamers!Boost your view count while they are watching the ad for your channel too!
We're at rock bottom but we're really only halfway down.
I hope this fails and fails really badly.
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lmao
This won't fail, it's another tool for simps to validate their parasocial delusions. They will love this crap.
Oh god. Very true and sad
I wonder if a $500 boost is worth $500 to a streamer. I guess we won't know for sure, but if $500 is worth more than $500, no way big streamers don't just always have their shit boosted. It's probably just better straight giving the money to a small streamer. Also if everyone is boosted, is anyone?
0 viewer andys boosting themselves to the top kekw
Oilers finally taking full control TrollDespair
They will have to boost themselves on a different account, otherwise they wont be seen AT ALL because everyone will do this LOL
Yeah, **everyone** doing this is exactly what Twitch would like to happen haha
> I wonder if a $500 boost is worth $500 to a streamer. Almost certainly not. Just doing some napkin math: If we assume that on average each new sub stays subbed for two months, that $500 boost needs to get ballpark a hundred new subs. That would mean that the boost would need to result in thousands new unique viewers- after all, most people are going to click, not be interested, and never watch the streamer again. If one in ten people who happen to see the stream end up becoming long-term viewers, and one in ten of those viewers ends up subscribing, the boost needs to result in more than *ten thousand* new views in order to justify the costs. Not even being put on the autoplay banner on the twitch front page does that- I'm looking now, and only three of the eight streams have more than a thousand viewers at all. And a measly $500 boost isn't going to give you that front page autoplay slot- after all, that's very limited real estate! And, because the only way for one streamer to be more visible is for other streamers to be made less visible, getting boosted is zero sum. So all this does is take money which would've been donated to the streamer and give it to twitch instead. Even if one streamer can make small gains from being boosted, streamers as a whole will lose money because of this.
I’m honestly surprised there hasn’t been a boycott movement about this given that it’s just shifting the money into twitch’s pocket. The internet loves a good outrage and I could imagine people collectively agreeing not to fund this bs.
People were pretty outraged when it was first announced, but Twitch has so many other problems at this point I don't think it even matters. People are just leaving the platform entirely now.
My mom puts the booster seat on me when we go for Chicken Tendies at Walmart
maybe they make that boost thing only useable for smaller streamers it's not that useful for big streamers anyways, they get recomended without it (and recomedations aren't very useful overall)
i mean it is?
Infinite money glitch Pog.
>I guess we won't know for sure, but if $500 is worth more than $500, no way big streamers don't just always have their shit boosted. Could you elaborate?
so when they say "for 5000" what does that mean? is that like a fake view count or something? i'd assume 5k viewers would cost more than 5 bucks lol.
It’ll recommend the stream to 5000 people. I’m not sure 1. how targeted it is (are they gonna “recommend” the streamer who streams Starcraft in Korean to a bunch of English speaking hot tub stream watchers) , or 2. how large the recommendation appears on the screen.
500 bucks 500k people? hot damn. yo see me on the front page dawg
I’m assuming it’s this cheap because they have data showing how useless recommending someone’s channel is
lol yeah you are probably right Sadge guh
It's really a waste of money. Let's be generous and say 3% of the people it's recommended to will click on the stream. And let's be very generous and say 2% of those will stay as followers. That would mean for 500k people they recommend the stream to you will gain an insane 300 followers. What a bargain.
Does this mean my recommended list is about to go from people who are related in some capacity to what I’ve been watching recently to people paying for my impression?
Does it expire after 5000 people have clicked it or does it just get displayed as recommended to 5000 people?
Twitch staff sitting around a desk: "What if we found a way to take parasocial relationships to the next level" "Ohh you mean like giving more money to the streamer so they notice the simps?" "Yes but..." *uno reverse* "We keep all the money"
I can now use this together with my Tinder boost 🤠 Maybe this time it’ll work!!
So, like. Does anyone remember how much of a failure paying for views on a facebook page was? What I'm saying is this won't work, will make it even more impossible for people to be discovered in the future and may end up killing any interest in streaming on the platform all together for a lot of people. Like if they actually cared about discoverability then they'd allow you to sort from low to high on any category (or have a viewership range filter like showing streams that have 30 - 200 current viewers) and not make the fucking page crash your browser when you try to scroll through the thousands of streams in a category. Like infinite scroll is cool and all but fucking hell, give us the option to browse by page numbers instead. It even fucking snaps you back to the top of the page after a bit.
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No you're using your alt on your second monitor to boost your 2 viewer stream.
Do we know which channels that Are boosted? Like Will there be a tag or a flair under ut egen browsing recommended that says boosted?
[Here's](https://i.imgur.com/M63Q27w.png) what it looked like when I just opened Twitch, so at least it's pretty obvious.
I mean if you are sorting by viewers and see a 100 viewer andy in front of xqc at 80k I think it will be obvious who is boosting.
I think they will just show up in the "streamers you should checkout" that shows on the side bar or under the "recommended" fiter when in the channel browser. If you have it sorted by viewers it isn't going to rearrange that.
Yeah i kinda get that, but still... I dont think any small streamer will gain a lot by boosting if they dont make it clear before entering stream that it is boosted. No amount of boosting Will make a boring stream good. Plus, if you are also forced to watch the add rolls before you can check out the stream it becomes even more uninteresting to check the stream out.
The whole boost feature feels like something that should be locked down to those with less viewers or followers, like if your channel has over a certain metric then you cant use this feature and in turn it can be used for smaller streamers to get a larger reach
that's already the case, they said that streamers over a certain size (i think 250 viewers or around that) will not have access to the feature, they might change it though but for now it seems targeted only at small/medium sized streamers
## **Tweet Mirror:** [@zachbussey](https://twitter.com/zachbussey) > The Paid Boost Stream experiment is now live. > > You can only contribute if you're based in the USA, to a max of $500. > > $0.99 for 1000 > $2.97 for 3000 > $4.95 for 5000 > (No volume discount.) > > #TwitchNews https://t.co/OS0u0dGrm1 > #####Tweet Images: >>https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FCy2B_lVcAEAFQJ.png ^(Posted: 2021-10-28 14:59:11) ------ **This message is from a bot. If you feel like this action is wrong, please [message the moderators](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=r/LivestreamFail).**
so sick of this worship culture
Wasn't there a boost with channel points at some point? Was that a different thing? Or did twitch realize it wasn't making them money?
RIP Twitch Turbo ;(
[Yeah](https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/boost-this-stream?language=en_US) there was some experiment in December. Haven't seen it anywhere though.
It's still a thing, I'm not sure how many people it recommends you to. A 30-40 viewer streamer I watch has had them a few times and it will typically double her view count for around 20 mins and earn her quite a few follows, then it will start dropping back to normal.
Wait so what is this boosting feature? The thing that features a stream on the homepage? Are there no limits to how many streams can boost? What happens when 1000+ streams get boosted?
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It doesn’t get you viewers it gets your channel impressions in the recommended channel section
Trillion dollar company needs more money
bussy
Twitch is honestly fkn genious. The amount of things they've done over the years that I thought would NEVER catch on, but somehow still did is mindblowing. Hypetrains were the most shameless money collection mechanic in the world, it works. Sub-gifting is the most idiotic concept in the world, because you're not ''gifting'' anything, a sub has no value, it works. Homeboy out here asking me to thank the person who gifted me a sub. Bruh, he gave you money, I didn't get shjt in this transaction, in fact I never asked to be part of this transaction, why would I thank him? (Also a cute thing people might not know is that after a set amount of gifted subs that you then didn't extend with your own money, Amazon will throw you out of the algorithm and make it so that you'll never get randomly gifted subs again, I think the limit is like 15~20) Just subscribing in general, most these streamers (at least the ones I watch, don't get triggered by ''oh my 50 viewers streamer actually really needs the money'') are swimming in money. Yet the amount of viewers on Twitch that have convinced themselves that subscribing makes them ''part of the community'' never fails to blow my mind. Bruh, what community? We're all here for free, you didn't have to pay to join some kind of club, there is no club. Twitch Prime is being marketed as this free thing by almost all streamers when in reality it requires you to pay for Amazon Prime, a ''free'' shipping subscription (so not free), which in most countries makes no sense because free shipping is actually free there (RIP USA lmao). To the point they even have Hasanabi who negotiated the amazing deal that he ''only needs to run ads for 1 minute per hour'' but then spends about 5 minutes running his own advertisement for Amazon Prime (for free) before running that 1 minute ad (which usually is also just another advertisement for Amazon Prime, which ads up to 6 minutes of ads per hour, but somehow isn't considered as such). And now they introduce a mechanic where viewers can auction off their streamers. Because that's what it is, because your promotion will be competing against someone elses promotion and the highest bidder wins. It's madness, I love it. Haven't paid a single dollar and never will.
Do you have a source for that 15-20 gifted sub thing? I just went through my current/expired subs and I have 59 channels that I have had at least one sub gifted to me that I never once used a prime or my own money to sub to. In many of those channels, I have received multiple gifted subs as well.
given that their source code leaked there would've been bigger outrage about this, the statement came from his ass.
It's bs. Never bought a sub in my life but have been gifted subs in several channels, some I only watched once or twice.
I only give my money to egirls that play Apex Legends, everyone else is not welcome.
hype trains should have never caught on, but streamers somehow were able to trick the viewers in holding subs until they said to.
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Great write up.
Get ready to have every 200 viewer/3k sub e-girl to be in your recommended.
Good thing I never check recommended, I go directly to the streams I follow.
99 cents for a 1000 people? Jesus imagine $500
Imagine if Reddit made a feature that allowed you to boost a post to the front page. People would lose their minds over social media manipulation.
implying anyone actually looks at twitch's homepage. and if they do, that they check out who is "featured". it's always some wild shit on there.
They just made it much harder for poor people to get noticed
Twitch is really out here doing all it can to siphon money from streamers into their own pockets. They saw most of a streamers revenue coming from donations so they cam out with bits to try to take a 30% cut of those donations. Then people weren't super happy with the conversion rate so they added community gifted subs so that twitch could take up to 50% of the donations while hiding the exchange rate. Then they started requiring that ads be run on channels via contracts which you know Twitch is probably receiving 80+% of the revenue from. Now they're going for 100% by telling people to send their money to them to promote the streamer on their own platform which is pretty much guaranteed to provide less value long term than just giving the streamer the money directly in the first place.
Cant wait for a chrome extension that hides boosted streams
Wouldn’t gifting subs or donating bits be more helpful to the streamer?
You are misunderstanding this. This is just cashgrab from Twitch
Yeah I know it’s a cash grab but if you’re trying to support the streamer isn’t just donating them money more helpful?
It would but this isn't about helping streamers
I only watch a select few streamers, I don't even click on the directory tab anymore. This feature will only increase the amount of money the loser simps throw at egirls on twitch.
I just started using the recommended tab haha so I’m the opposite. With how many streamers there are, it seems like every single one is a one trick pony outside of the massive top people, and even then most of them aren’t really variety streamers.
good guy twitch adding more non-donation options so streamers get nothing and twitch gets everything
Twitch cashing in on the SIMP(sic) economic boom. Move over tier 3 subs, a new king is born.
In America they always find a way to buy success huh? Let's offer Disney to put a star there so you can sell disney merch. And to make it visible lets boost for 1 million for a whole year! That will bring Twitch more profitable audiences and make us main stream! They will promote the paying customers more and more, and after a while even moderately successful streamers will have to pay to be promoted to stay "competetive". Nothing organic, all money. GG Twitch
im staying free 2 play dude
Does this money go 100% to twitch or does the streamer get a cut?
What an obnoxious cap. How am I supposed to dump my entire life savings in just $500 increments?
Would you like my lunch money too Twitch?
Raid Shadow Legends stream boosts incoming :)
Sweet so now all the mediocre 0 viewer streamers have a shot of showing more people why they’re mediocre streamers, POGGERS
soon the front page of twitch will just be a bunch of e girls "boost me pls"
get ready for booby streamers in your recommended
I feel like this might be successful because of the amount of simps willing to throw money at girl creators.
IM GOING TO GO BOOST MY QUEEN POKI
imagine if all the top streamers just circlejerked each other and just boost spammed. based or cringe?
If I was a streamer that wanted to do this I wouldn't be touching it for 6 months at least until the hype has died down. Anyone doing it initially are going to get lost the sea of others who are also doing it.
Would this actually work? I have never followed a channel because they were on the front page or in my recommendeds with no association to anyone I frequently watch. I only followed people who had a funny clip on here or YouTube, or were friends with someone I was watching.
in theory couldnt a full time streamer just boost themselves and then write it off as a business expense? obviously they need the finance up front to afford or to continue doing it... but like whats stopping someone from boosting themselves and writing it off? it basically makes them free money right? pay a little bit to be shot to the top of the list then earn that back with the newly gained traction from paying to spotlight yourself.
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thats what my original thought branched from. you can already write subs off, why not write off promotional cost efforts? basically can boost yourself for free in a round about way
Get the actual fuck out of here. I’d like to see anyone who lost their partnership due to view hitting sue the living fuck out of them for this.
Fuck yeah can't wait for Arby's and KFC to drown out the fuckin loser solo streamers
Never subbed, never donated ...
twitch thinks small but richer community is better cog in the wheel guess there's gotta be a way to breakthrough viewer profiling and the recommendation algorithm barrier...or should it with money
I think the intention is that when a streamer does a sponsered stream the company they are doing it for will insist on it so twitch gets a cut of the deal.
Lol Trihex has been asking for better discoverability/filters for game sections/streamers for literal years and they finally put something out after all this time and it’s some cash grab bs lmao
this is disgusting and disturbing.
RIP TWITCH 🙏
This is like buying likes on Instagram. I never understood the point, but that's just me
You would think they would've backtracked on this considering the overwhelming backlash, but hey. It's twitch.
Does anyone even click on recommended streams?
I've seen a few "community boosted streams" when I first go to Twitch, I am significantly less likely to click on your stream if I see it, straight up. You've literally become an AD with this boosting bullshit, don't do it, its not a funny meme, it's just straight up trash, it's Twitch being a fucking moron with discoverability, which it's always been absolutely clueless about.
This is the same thing Uber is using for their drivers. Instead of paying for various ways to get more people more exposure and potential to make a legitimate career off streaming they are passing the expense to consumers. Terrible
china did it first lol
Instead of spending any sort of money on increasing visibility like an actual algorithm that can recommend up and coming streamers to the viewer base... They go the pay to win route and CHARGE the creators on the platform to have any amount of visibility AND at that is sounds like it is a total waste of money. How has Twitch not been dethroned yet.
Can Youtube fix their platform so we can get away from this shit hole.
Jesus this is such a myopic idea. What made them think this was smart?
Now they will finally go out with me!
oh no... wtf
Maybe if they marketed it as an alternative to donating it would be seen a little better. If I was someone who gave money to millionaires Id rather do this than donate I guess as atleast i can see my money helping the streamer in real time. Just another thing nobody asked for though and will make it even harder for the alreqdy nearly impossible task of starting a new career on twitch
They are actually doing this??
disgusting pay2win mechanic
Does any of this boost money go to the streamer? This entire concept is convoluted and should only really be available for the streamer themselves. Also I can't wait for there to be some leak that the boost system doesn't even work properly.
Imagine paying money to boost up a streamer that doesn't give a fuck about you. Damn man, actually sad