People see more of a value in gifting subs rather than bits, including me. I personally wouldn't ever pay for bits, but much rather for gift subs to leave a message for my favourite streamers.

Gift subs would be incentivized more if an option to add a message was created. It would benefit streamers who use TTS integration, and would also be a win-win for them and their community (also, you know, Twitch). Hoping this ‘plan’ hasn’t been dropped since it was suggested in 2018.

This would make interaction much better between community and the streamer.
It can then also be used in cooperation with TTS to integrate messages for channels that use that.

This would allow more/better interactivity between the streamer and the community. It could probably work the same or similar way as bits do currently.

I believe that this would be a good way to give the chat another voice to communicate with the Streamer. It will work essentially the same as bits.

This would increase channel interativity and allow TTS integration to work better with gifted subs from the community.

What I think would be useful, is that on the side of the streamer, when subs are gifted it should display the tier of the gifted subs.
So someone gifting 5 T1 subs gets the same message as someone gifting 5 T3 subs, even though the price goes from 40 aud to 200 aud.

This would increase channel interativity and allow TTS integration to work better with gifted subs from the community.

Aside from anonymous gifts (an easy fix) there doesn't really seem to be any downside for this; it's another avenue to encourage chat iterations with streamer.

Plus this has been "planned" since 2018... is it possible this might be able to get more traction / movement?

Some streamers doing sub-a-thons or during a hype train should be encouraged and allowed to leave a tts message if people are dropping tens to hundreds of dollars to support a streamer. No message for anonymous gifters to prevent TOS issues incase something is said and they can't be banned by mods.

This feature would greatly increase engagement among those that gift subs to their favorite streamers. Giving more information to streamers can only be a good thing.

I gift for 2 reasons, and both should have messages. If I gift to a specific person, it's often because they're a friend or they've said something clever in chat, and I'd like them to know that. If I gift many people at once, it's because I'm generally supporting the streamer, and I'd like them to know that and know why. It's the same as when I can put a message in my own sub. As a streamer, I'd love to have those messages as well to help me engage with my audience more.

People send gifted subs and bits to support their favorite streamers and to communicate with them. Adding the ability to add a message to gifted subs is a great way to allow more community interaction with the streamer. This is a great idea!

This would open up another amazing opportunity for fans to interact with the streamer. Anonymous should be exempt from this function for the protection of the streamer and viewers, but all in all this would be an amazing addition to the twitch platform.

Thor told me to.

This would be a great addition to the platform and add another level of interaction for streamers to make alerts off of. This could work exactly as bits do today. The one caveat is that anonymous subs should not have this functionality just like anonymous bits do not have it.

Definitely would increase engagement. Wild that this is not a thing already.

For streamers that use a funded TTS to engage with their community, this feels like a win win. It promotes more gifted subs, and allows for more community engagement. For the Goblin King!

I find it odd that twitch does not allow a message with a gifted sub. Let people spread joy within the community that they are supporting.

This is a good idea as it would give more incentive to provide gifted subs and would be a fun way to interact with content creators.