Spendable Balance, LATAM Plus Program, YouTube Leaderboard, and Bluesky Verification

Hello! I've had such a busy morning already, so let's keep this intro short and jump right into the recap!

🟪 TWITCH

• Creators will soon be able to share clips to their Twitch Stories in the creation flow.
• Spendable Balance, a way to spend your Twitch earnings on Gifted Subs or Bits, is rolling out in the coming days/weeks. I made a video about this in January - the details are clearer, but my takeaway remains the same.
• Twitch's Plus Program got easier for select LATAM countries, reducing the 60% split to 50 Subs (down from 100) and the 70% split to 200 Subs (down from 300). Why are they doing this? Likely because of the exodus of Spanish-speaking creators in the last year.
• New cover art for Art, Talk Shows & Podcasts, Beauty & Body Art, Food & Drink, and Makers & Crafting was added this week. They are widely being criticized for being AI.
• Twitch updated the Drops Guide for game publishers.
• Two new Global Emotes dropped this week: StreamerU and FaZe.
• Support removed "other official Twitch Twitter accounts" from their documentation.
• Shared Hype Trains launched this week to encourage more usage of Guest Star. You can unlock three time-limited exclusive emotes during the first 30 days.
• Highlights and Uploads over the 100-hour limit have started to be deleted.
• If your chat has been 'refreshing' when you join a channel and try to type, you're not alone! A very annoying bug that's been bothering me for over two weeks.
• Crunchyroll ran a promotion that gave a 1-month free trial if you gifted 2 subs on Twitch. The promotion is now over.
• Twitch Legal now lists all of their open-source software Attributions.

🟥 YOUTUBE

• YouTube is testing an XP Leaderboard with select live creators. Viewers unlock XP by chatting or giving Super Chats/Stickers.
• Premium Lite has expanded to Canada, the UK, Brazil, Mexico, and more countries.

⬛ TIKTOK

• TikTok is testing Shoppable Live, which allows you to add products to sell to your viewers.
• Layoffs in TikTok Shop have reportedly started.

🟦 DISCORD

• Researchers scraped 2 billion Discord messages posted in open servers.
• Discord Orbs may soon be getting a launch.

🔲 OTHERS

• Kick has added Custom Tags.