YouTube's Big Announcements, Twitch Age Verification, Baller League + TikTok Sale Soon?
Good morning and welcome to this week's newsletter! YouTube made a significant number of announcements last week at its Made On YouTube event. In general, the updates encompass nearly every type of content on the platform, but perhaps most importantly, they have woken from their livestreaming slumber. The most telling sign (outside of the announcements) was a single statistic they shared, "30% of daily users watched live content in Q2." I'm assuming that most of that viewership is light-touch, meaning it might only be people scrolling past it or watching just for a few minutes. Deep engagement on live content remains the domain of Twitch, for now. The fact that YouTube shared that stat suggests that they want to increase it, in terms of active users, session time, and engagement. YouTube wants to focus more on Community, and there's nothing that builds community better than live content. It's precisely why I made my prediction about it at the beginning of the year.
If you haven't explored YouTube streaming, it may be time to do so. With that, let's jump into all the stories from the week!
🟪 TWITCH
- Newsletter subscribers can now view the Twitchcon San Diego 2025 Party List.
- Twitch is introducing Age Verification, which requires users in some regions to perform a facial scan with their device to estimate their age. It will also impact the visibility of some content with Content Classification Labs.
- Twitch University is a new launch, aiming to introduce and educate students about the platform.
- Twitch CEO Dan Clancy was invited to speak to the US government about the Radicalization of Online Forum users. The CEO of Discord, Reddit, and Steam were also invited.
- There are five new Hype Train emotes created by Tom Thinks.
- With 30 days until Twitchcon San Diego 2025, ticket sales pace is about 15% lower than in 2024.
- Twitchcon meet and greets are using a randomized matchmaking system.
- Twitch has launched a Get Clips Download API.
🟥 YOUTUBE
- YouTube is launching Combined Chat for Horizontal and Vertical livestreams. They are also launching a combined dashboard and combined viewership.
- YouTube is launching AI-powered Live to Shorts, which will generate Shorts-worthy clips from a stream for creators to approve.
- You will soon be able to switch mid-stream from Public to Members-Only livestreams.
- YouTube is expanding Likeness Detection to help all YouTube Partners detect, manage, and request the removal of AI videos using their likeness.
- YouTube Shorts is getting AI features, including 'Edit with AI', 'Speech to Song', and a free version of Veo 3 to generate video and audio.
- Collaborations is releasing globally in the next few weeks. It allows up to five creators to co-publish a video, potentially increasing discovery by sharing it with everyone's audience.
- Mobile streamers will be able to React Live to other Live Content sometime next year.
- New side-by-side ads are launching soon. (Previously covered in May 2025).
- You will soon be able to A/B Test Video Titles.
- YouTube will soon allow you to dub video in other languages and match your mouth movements.
- YouTube also announced Dynamic Ad Insertion, allowing creators to sell ads in their content by CPM rate rather than burning the ad into the video at a flat rate.
⬛ TIKTOK
- The US has, once again, delayed the TikTok Ban until December.
- The WSJ reports that TikTok's US operations may be purchased by a group that includes Oracle, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch.
🟦 DISCORD & TWITTER X
- Discord is offering Nitro users an Avatar Decoration, Profile Effect, and Nameplate for free.
- Discord will be a native app on Meta Quest in 2026.
- TwitterX is testing an option to pay for extra reach.
🔲 OTHERS
- Meta's new smart glasses will allow you to stream to Twitch.
- Kick has launched KICKs (similar to Twitch Bits).