Twitch

twitch

Twitch Extensions launched six months ago, and since then, there have been 1.5 billion interactions on desktop.  Billions, my friends.  As of this week, they are now available on mobile, so viewers can enjoy leaderboards, polls and even match histories – where ever you watch your streams.  That said, not every extension is mobile ready right now.  It’s up to developers to decide whether or not to make the Extension available on mobile devices.  However, there’s a good chance that most of them probably will.  I mean, why wouldn’t you take advantage of this opportunity?  If you’re looking for an Extension that is already good to go, you should try all-in-one Streamlabs Loyalty, Music, Polls, and Games, plus Schedule and World of Warcraft Armory.  In order to take advantage of the update, you’ll need version 6.0 or higher.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Twitch, it is a popular online service for watching and streaming digital video broadcasts. When it was founded it 2011, Twitch originally focused almost entirely on video games but has since expanded to include streams dedicated to artwork creation, music, talk shows, and the occasional TV series.

Twitch

And for those of you who aren’t familiar with the Extensions, they are interactive overlays and panels, which put you at the heart of the next evolution in live streaming.  With Extensions, the Twitch community can interact in ways that were never thought possible – from heat maps and real-time game data overlays to mini-games, music requests, and leaderboards.

What does the foray into mobile mean exactly?  Expanding the reach of Extensions creates new opportunities for developers.  That is why Twitch is also rolling out its developer rig, which is designed to help developers build and test their Extensions.  Developer rig is a web app that lets developers test an extension locally against production APIs across a variety of views and roles (the broadcaster live view, for example). Developers will also be able to pull down the new “Hello World” sample code (which includes a basic backend scaffold) to iterate on the extension, as well as add additional views and custom resolutions.

Twitch

Where will this go?  Twitch says that this release is “just the beginning”.  It plans on improving and adding to the rig in the near future.  It seems to be taking on a more collaborative approach to the feature, as it’s encouraging feedback on the improvements and code samples.

This makes sense.  When you have a system that you want people to use, you need to make sure that you’re considering what people actually want.  Otherwise, what’s the point?  I think we see this a lot with certain platforms.  They don’t ask their users how to improve the system.  Take Instagram for example.  People have been asking for a more chronological feed for years now.  They’re finally starting to listen, but without that kind of feedback, how do you know what your users actually want?  It’s good to see that they’re taking this approach as it can only add to the popularity of the service.