📢 || DJ 808 Day, Kai Cenat's KC Fest, Bleed Purple Statue + YouTube Live PiP Ads

Zach Bussey -

Good day, streamers! There are a lot of updates this week, so I'll keep the intro nice and short! For starters, every Monday shortly after I send this newsletter, I go live on Twitch and YouTube to read through and add some thoughts! You can watch that here:

Also, a quick thank you to the new Premium supporters! Your support helps a ton in building upon the work here! And with that, let's get into the recap!

Twitch News

  • The Bleed Purple Statues, announced at Twitchcon Rotterdam, are gearing up for release on the Achievements dashboard.
  • Streamers and Mods with ad snooze permissions will see the Incoming Ad Break overlay at the top of the chat instead of the bottom.
  • The DJ Category officially launched this week on August 8th. It coincided with (as mentioned weeks ago) a week-long celebration of DJs and an opening day 24/7 DJ raid train featuring well-known DJs like Zedd and platform-established DJs.
  • A new Global Animated Emote, BopBop, was launched for watching 15 minutes of DJ content.
  • Wired wrote about how the new DJ program has flaws, but it's the best there is currently.
  • Spam bots are using the DJ badge to give their accounts more legitimacy. For the uninitiated, it looks much like the Partner badge and even appears in searches and profiles like the Partner badge.
  • Creator Clubs for both IRL creators and DJ creators launched this week. If you apply, tell them I sent you!
  • A bipartisan group of American Senators has called on Twitch and other platforms requesting confirmation that they intend to adopt the Take It Down and Stop NCII programs, which seek to slow the spread of non-consensual intimate imagery.
  • Smart Detection has been expanded to 13 new languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. It was previously limited to English.
  • Twitch is quietly re-testing Bonus Bits, which could mean it's part of the upcoming Subtember promotion.
  • Mod View on iOS now has a Channel Points Request Queue and Quick Action Polls.
  • SXSW Sydney will have a keynote speech by Twitch CEO Dan Clancy.
  • Twitch's Chief Marketing Officer, Rachel Delphin, was on the Digiday Podcast.

Streaming Industry News

  • YouTube is testing Picture-in-Picture ads for live streams to offer a less intrusive experience for people watching live content.
  • TikTok is now an official partner with Gamescom 2024. It will bring a gaming area, LIVE space, stage, and other interactive experiences.
  • Discord has a GTA Online Quest for a free profile decoration for US users.
  • StreamElements has added support for Warnings with its chatbot.
  • Kick updated its Community Guidelines to be softer in some areas and forward-dated it to August 20th, 2024. See the changes here. Kick also launched a version of Automod with settings to account for sexual, hate, violence, drugs, and more.
  • YouTube's former CEO, Susan Wojcicki, passed away at age 56 after a two-year fight with cancer.
  • Lumia Stream's major update includes Fourthwall, MixItUp, CrowdControl, Discord, and Vtube integration, a new loyalty points system, and Govee Light controls.
  • Whatnot launched Boosts this week, a feature that failed to launch on Twitch. Note: Whatnot's Chief Product Officer was formerly Twitch's Chief Product Officer until mid-2023.