Twitch SIDEBAR changes for more visibility for smaller streamers.
ISSUE: The expand sidebar option is not present when you are not using twitch in a full screen window, if you want to have a twitch window in side-by-side mode it does not let you use the sidebar effectively. I am asking Twitch help restore the discoverability of small streamers and the interaction between streamers and make it easier for creators to raid at the end of a stream. The sidebar is the first thing you see on desktop, but you cannot see smaller streamers in the follower Section. ISSUE: I had thought a lot of my peer streamers and smaller creators I followed had stopped streaming on twitch because I did not see them in the side bar, the reality was I just followed so many bigger creators, that I no longer EVER see them on the side bar, with the inclusion of 24/7 channels. When raiding a creator could simply use the improved sidebar, or a viewer could navigate easily to the stream they want to watch. They could see MORE of their followers on the side bar. We could achieve this by making each of the other categories: Live channels which shows recommended, and Suggested Categories, Minimizable, to where only the Icon was visible. IF we made the Camera (live channels), and the Categories' icon there and have the ability to click on it to minimize and maximize it we could add 12 more followed streams to the side bar, while still displaying the icons. ALTERNATIVELY, if could be achieved without too much UI clutter, you could implement an INVISIBLE scroll box where the scroll box is not visible (meaning you can see the bit where you can drag) unless you are moving within the scroll box, so the change could be subtle. I think this would be the best solution. We would implement the invisible scroll box to FOLLOWED CHANNELS on the twitch side bar, so I could EASILY scroll and see everyone online just by their twitch icon, which I will likely recognize, the feature to scroll over and see the title and game doesn't necessitate I go to the following page every time. For me this is how I Intuitively used twitch, to make me go to the follower's page to watch a smaller streamer is a barrier and will likely cause me to just watch another big creator, which Is not always my intent or do I think fair for discoverability. It's a case of the rich getting richer, can you gun for the small guy? I would love to see features implemented like this. You could also make the categories minimizable and implement scroll boxes for the other categories perhaps, this would allow greater user deliberation, while also expanding the number of suggested categories and live channels for twitch curation.
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skydigz
commented
I think you should still make the categories collapsable and potentially scrollable without expanding. There also seems to be an issue that another user stated where if you expand so much, sometimes where you go to minimize the sidebar itself so you can now see the condensed view of your followed channels it sometimes instead just "shows less" of your followed channels and doesn't minimize the sidebar. After playing with it I can get the feature to work how I intend, although the suggested categories are no longer present, maybe I could minimize live channels to see them? And I don't know if I followed more active channels if I would have an issue with seeing all of my channels in the sidebar, now that I think about it, I probably have a lot more followed channels that aren't being represented. for people with a LOT of streamers, it would be nice if you could somehow extend it to the point to where the streamers are offline/offline, maybe this could be a point that moves so they can always see when a new person is online, which I think is the purpose of expanding the sidebar because you might miss notifications.