I have recently tested your new viewer count algorithms and have found results that point to two simultaneous streams are allowed only... not a 'handful'(?) as you stated on twitter?
I believe this will make things impossible for the smaller streamers and hurt Twitch a little bit too in the long run.

The smaller streamers are basically the collateral damage in this as most streamers on twitch have a slow moving all important chat until they get into the 100s of viewers. Most of the viewers that do stay behind will usually have multiple streams open as their main, whilst they come by to say hi and see what's up every now and then. These are usually the early base of viewers that increase their viewer count to somewhat respectable for them to be noticed by more and more people and THAT is when their personality and charisma can come into play to get the snowball of rolling. By limiting these streamers to the 'two streams on max or their views won't count' law, the little guys basically have this taken away and it leaves practically only one option for them to realize their dreams: a once in a lifetime occurence causing them to go viral and blow up. A hard task has only become harder.

These new algorithms also don't take into account the fact that these days alot of people simply do not have a high attention span and seeing as the nature of streaming is more comparable to a 5 course dinner instead of quick fast food (Youtube), viewers are bound to be inclined to have multiple streams open simultaneously, and usually more than the two that are allowed nowadays.

In the long run I feel Twitch could discourage a large amount of streamers with this viewer count system and could lose promising streamers who will never realize their potential and who will never be discovered because of the new viewer count algorithms? If need be, at least make the competition fair by correcting the codes and make the rule affect everyone on twitch because I have come upon quite a few irregularities during testing. But ideally, a midway compromise could be adjusting the algorithms to 5 tabs, which seems more in line with the honest lurkers' viewing behavior on Twitch.

Thank you for your time and again, I hope Twitch will review their decision and at least leave a little bit more breathing space for the smaller streamer to grow.

The feature in channel analytics -- "What categories do my viewers like to watch?" -- seems like it does not update daily. But, in general, we could use more information and focus on this, period.

Regarding the first request, can we get assurance this is updated daily, and if not can we make it daily? Knowing what our viewers like to watch and being able to continue to serve that is, perhaps, the most important metric of all. Having observed the metrics, it appears to me this data get a weekly refresh and then is only an average of those last 7 days. If, true, that boils down to only getting 4 updates per month, which is only so helpful.

If anything, viewers change their habits in real-time and trends happen. Ex. if they are all watching Tarkov because of the Drops, or they are watching GTA because of a new DLC (which you didn't notice), these trends must happen fast.

Additionally, we need more definition on what one of these "viewers" are as well. According to Twitch it's the following: ..."This shows the top games/categories viewed across all of your viewers. These are games that you may want to consider incorporating into future streams."

So, what is a viewer? Are they all of your followers? Are they someone that's viewed your stream actively within some period of time? But does it include non-followers?

As we can imagine, I'm sure many creators would want to know information about engaged viewers of their streams, but also subscribers and tippers, for example. Without getting in the weeds, this is just a note of the potential depth or prioritization that could be useful. I'd have a lot of ideas there (as well as metrics as whole).

SUMMARY: Is "What My Viewers Like to Watch" being updated daily? What is a "viewer" defined as? What will it take to prioritize this as a potential feature update to deepen?

Recently Twitch may have pushed an update so that raid alerts only activate if there are at least 5 people in the raid. People only learnt about this after a streamer sent a support ticket in about the issue for their own channel, and was responded with "You will need more viewers for the notification to be sent out." On top of this, they may have also pushed an update that ignores hosts of 1 person in the past. Since we only have a mans word and a few pictures to work with, there's no guarantee that this is a real update. However, if these changes are real and pushed without our knowledge, both of them need to be reverted.

Why was this changed in the first place? Raiding is a way of saying "Thank you for joining me, lets go watch this person now that I'm done my stream". It's an invitation for people to meet someone new, usually someone the streamer is friends or a fan of. Many streamers have events that happen when they are raided, such as a thank-you song or a daily conversation question. Most of the twitch community that streams usually raid with less than 10 viewers, and missing out on any raid notification means the streamer can't thank or invite viewers for joining, since there's no way for them to know. Without small raids showing up, it leaves a lot of our community unable to grow their own communities!

What about larger streamers that get dozens of small raids and hosts in a single stream? Well, they've already had ways to get around this issue for many years! Most streaming alert applications such as the ones used through Streamlabs and StreamElements systems have a built-in minimum host/raid system so that users can set their own minimum raid/host amount for alerts to be played. There are also custom alert settings, so people could use different alerts for a different amount of raiders. If streamers never wanted an alert to pop up, the can just get rid of it on their own!

Instead of taking away an ability that was controllable and diverse, why not upgrade it for the larger streamers who do want their activity feed & dashboard cleaner & more manageable? Twitch could add a system to the activity feed on everyone's dashboard that could filter out any unnecessary alerts, and add a filter for minimum number of viewers in a raid or host! Any alerts that "would" have gone through could then be sent to a filtered activity feed, so if need be streamers can check and see what was taken off of their main feed.

Forcing a minimum number for smaller raids affects smaller streamers the most, affiliated or not, and larger streamers already have ways to set their own raid & host alerts to a minimum amount. This was never a major issue, and already had it's workarounds for the people that needed it. We want you to remove minimum raid & host alerts and stop hiding the small streams that are sending their viewers to someone new. This is not what helps build a community, it keeps the people on top up there, and hurts the smaller streamers trying to grow.

Having a celebration using some confettis and effects on the stream is a great idea altogether, although, you're missing one thing :

That can be done. FOR FREE. Kappagen and Emote Walls already exist, so people already have access to a "free celebration" already.

Moreover, one "small" celebration is the price of a monthly sub. Somebody used it on stream and their first reaction was "I instantly regret it.", making me wanting to remove the function altogether from the channel. I want to make people smile, not have them sad at an overpriced function.

Also, people have to "pay" to get it, they cannot even use bits to do so. PLUS, added to that, 50/50 cut on top of this makes this even worse as an option, because if you get a sub, on most if not all streamers who have kappagen on: you can literally have a flowery emote celebration with any sub, follow, donation, you name it... Making this entire "feature" pointless.

While it came from a nice viewpoint, this is an obvious cashgrab unfortunately, and people are ALREADY not liking it. I don't even want it anymore while I like to have things to interact with the channel with!

That said, it is not completely unsalvageable.

A way you could change it is integrate it with the Channel Point system. Have them do a big celebration when a HUGE point redemption is redeemed!

Or integrate them into the Subs/Cheers. Not as a solo thing. Give more value to what you currently have, as those options aren't unfortunately the best to support the streamers at the same time as most people who want to support a streamer will either sub (for emotes and ads)/cheer (because they have ads for bits)/donate (because the cut is way better for the streamer overall).

Give more value to the things you have, or give enough value to the feature you're going to involve in the stream. This feature has none of that, and it is hard to "celebrate" when both sides feel this ripped off. I'd rather have someone sub to me at that price and use my emotes everywhere for a month or remove all ads (which are very much a problem as well at the moment) than to have them have confettis for 5 seconds that I cannot even see.

More interactive things are needed on Twitch, so you're not exactly offcourse, but this was a shot in the dark that landed right in the head of the community here.

One of the complaints that I received during one of my recent watch party streams is that a viewers messages were never appearing in chat. This was because they did not have a valid prime subscription. My recommendation would be to treat the watch party like a subscriber only stream and/or like a VOD for the duration of the watch party and lift those restrictions when the watch party isn't happening. It would also be nice if there was something to tell them to connect their prime account or direct them on how to get prime so that they can participate.