Good Morning and Happy Juneteenth! How are you feeling about the state of the streaming space right now? Personally, I find it overwhelming, and I cover the space! It's one of the reasons I love doing this newsletter - it gives me a chance to document and review everything quietly on my own time. BUT, it still leaves questions about the future of streaming - and I ask myself what should I do?
Now, I've been a creator for my entire adult life and have seen many platforms get worse over time or lose all relevance/community. It's the nature of being a creator... you have to be nimble and mitigate risk as best as you can. Whenever I feel risk levels are spiking up, I do three things to plan ahead.
- Breathe. First and foremost, I remember to take a deep breath. Things don't typically change overnight. I have time to breathe and calm myself before making any decision.
- Think Long, Medium, and Short Term. Once I've taken that breath, I think about my next steps. Long-term goals are 2-5 years out and where I want my career to be. Medium-term are the upcoming 365 days. Short-term are those I can accomplish in the next 30-90 days.
- Act. Once I have my goals, I start making minor changes toward those ambitions. That may mean instead of streaming 4-days a week on Twitch, I split ONE stream in half and try to bring my community elsewhere for the second half. Or maybe, I redirect that time into editing a video. My loyalty is to my community, and I don't want to make drastic overnight changes that throw them to the wind. Instead, small tactical changes done over a long period while communicating with them will make that bridge easier to cross.
I hope that helps some of you. Granted, everyone's journey is different, and if you feel that an overnight change is best for you, go for it! You know yourself and your community better than I do. Sometimes a fresh start is exactly what you need! With that, let's get into the news!
Twitch News
- Twitch launched a new Partner Plus Program, enabling a subsect of partnered creators to get a 70/30 sub-split for a period of 1-year. To get this, they must have 350 self-paid subs for 3-consecutive months. My video explains it. Considering this will only impact a few thousand creators, community reaction wasn't widely positive. I see it as a small win to build from. It's an admission by Twitch execs that they cannot stop an idea whose time has come.
- If you want to figure out how many self-paid subs you have, @jrobthehuman has you covered.
- Reruns now add a tag instead of other indicators that a stream is a rerun.
- A Hype Challenge campaign started for UK Twitch Partners from June 16-25.
- Twitchcon will be opening a meet-and-greet reservation system around June 27th.
- Former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear commented on the Ninja situation from 2019, claiming the experiment caused "no actual traffic loss. Actually probably a boost."
- Refinery29 is the first company to get access to Twitch's shopping tool "Stream Picks."
- The Information profiled Dan Clancy (hard paywall, though.)
- Forbes wrote an article titled "Twitch is Starting to Feel like a Failed State."
- PR Week notes Twitch's competitors are seizing opportunities caused by seemingly endless bad news.
- Harris Heller had a weird interaction with a Twitch staffer in his chat this week. He's attempted to calm the anger over it.
- I looked into the crystal ball (before the announcement of the new Partner Plus program) to predict what might be coming for Twitch next! I'll re-evaluate in a year if I was right!
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