Twitch Nudges, Beast Games, YouTube Voice Replies, and TikTok Supreme Court

Hello, and welcome to the last newsletter of 2024! I wanted to use this intro to thank you all for a wonderful year! This newsletter has grown a lot, and based on the stats, the vast majority (~80%) of you find value in opening it at least monthly. I have some exciting plans for 2025 that hopefully will add even more reasons to subscribe, share, and read weekly! But, with that, I hope you have a fantastic rest of the holiday season and a fun and safe New Year, and let's jump right into the news!

Platform Updates

🟪 TWITCH

• Creators now have a Search Bar on the Creator Dashboard.
• A new nudge encourages people to gift a sub so they don't lose their active Gift Sub badge. Note: You don't lose the badge permanently; you get it back whenever you gift a sub. This has always been how it works. The problem is many gifters have stopped/slowed gifting as much, so they're trying to get that back.
• Partners can now REVERT to an old username they changed away from once. Three weeks ago, I noted in this newsletter that Ludwig was the first time they allowed a Twitch creator to do this.
• Twitch sent an alert to non-Americans with expiring W-8 BEN tax forms, even if they had already resubmitted (creating confusion and concern). But, it can be ignored if you recently did it correctly.
• EleGiggle was removed as a global emote, as the agreement was not renewed.
• The Bonus Round officially starts today.
• A new Global emote featuring Shroud was launched this week: PewPewPew.
• The MrBeast Beast Games Twitch promotion resulted in about 1500 streamers participating in watching the show. Twitch also added an emote for BeastGames.
• Twitch's socials shared 15 creators with less than 15,000 followers who are on the come-up. Those featured included vaqrgaming, Denz, Sarahtoninx9, huds601, hangouqiqi, cartoontherapy, RainyRentyn, Saseffects, Sciants_Streams, Sw33ts_, SauceDeVille, SpectralSybil, SemiSpri, AndreaDLPL, and NekoMikki.

🟥 YOUTUBE

• YouTube is testing Voice Replies, which allows creators to reply to comments on their content. It's being tested on the iOS YouTube app with select creators in the USA.
• YouTube has added the ability for creators to allow their content to train AI and specify which companies. It is optional and OFF by default.
• YouTube will soon begin cracking down on egregious clickbait. For now, they will remove offending content without issuing a strike.

⬛ TIKTOK

• On January 10th, the Supreme Court will hear TikTok's complaint about the law that could ban the app on January 19th.
• Albania is the latest country to ban TikTok. They've enacted a one-year ban on the service that started on Saturday.

🟦 TWITTER X

• Elon Musk says that Hashtags on Twitter are no longer necessary.