Emmett Shear, Twitch's CEO, and last remaining cofounder, resigned last week. Internally, this news was expected by many after he announced months prior that he was going to be having a child. The news seemed to generally be welcomed among the community as it has felt like there hasn't been a CEO at Twitch since 2019. Whatever you think about Emmett Shear, the fact remains that he was the head steward of a company many of us love and spend hours on daily. So, despite Twitch's flaws and bad decisions over the last couple of years - we still owe him our thanks.
That brings us to the elephant in the room: Dan Clancy, Twitch's New CEO. We don't know a lot about him and what his tenure as CEO might look like, but we have a couple of indicators: THAT Blog Post and Guest Star. That blog post is our first impression and doesn't instill much confidence. It created fear, used terrible examples, and didn't communicate effectively what was changing and who it impacted. Guest Star gives us a bit more confidence. It's a good tool, serves a purpose, and is well-designed. But it's an excessive investment in something that will never be used by more than a fraction of the community. Now that said, Dan Clancy has been the President (and effectively the co-CEO) since Michael Aragon (former CCO) and Sara Clemens (former COO) left in January 2022. So, I don't expect significant changes in the short-to-mid term - for better or worse.
I only wish Shear had stepped down in 2021, and we could have seen Sara Clemens as CEO of Twitch. I think it would have been something great. And with that, thanks for indulging me in a longer post - now let's get into the news!
Twitch News
- Twitch's CEO Emmett Shear resigned on Thursday. He shared a letter on Twitter and the blog. President Dan Clancy is the new CEO. This post by Aureylian, former Director of Community & Creator Marketing, is particularly good commentary.
- Chat Highlights now have an optional Raider Highlight. You'll likely want to pair down the time.
- Twitch's Front Page is getting an experiment that will rerank shelves based on the user. It may help with making the front page more helpful.
- If you're a Twitch Partner wondering why your Ads Incentive Offer is $0 or without an estimate, here's why.
- Front Page Carousel placement has reduced the required self-paid subs to 200 for US creators. Previously, it required 300.
- Amazon is laying off 9000 more people, and Twitch is apparently impacted.
- Twitch finally addressed the problem with Raids not pulling all users. They made three early suggestions on possible reasons but continue to investigate. The CPO says the data supports something is wrong, and they'll share more when possible.
- Clip View Counts were broken but fixed the day that it was noticed.
