Do not deprecate hosts.
There was a notice put out about hosts becoming deprecated next month.
This is an awful idea. Do not do this.
The reason given for doing it is clear and obvious deflection; it's false. No one with average viewership under like 6000 uses twitch chats as a community server; when someone is offline, that's it. Their attention is off the chat and elsewhere. The idea that hosts prevent interactions with streamers is complete bull.
Moreover, raids are not a direct replacement for hosts (most people don't even -know- this because this fact has been so thoroughly obfuscated,) because of the referral ID causing a viewer to not count to the raided channel for ad or partnership metrics. Hosting was an incredibly useful -community building tool- on twitch; you host into another channel, that user notes you down, they host into you and share their audience in a way that actually contributes useful numbers beyond "was a viewer". Raiding does not do this. Raiding is an anti-growth tool. Viewers might follow and check someone out again following a raid, but many are there primarily just because a streamer raided them over and have no interest in staying; hosts, because they required active interaction with the hosted channel were more likely to stay because it tested viewer interest.
Hosting was and still is an invaluable community tool. To remove it and not provide its actual functionality to raids is extremely anti-user.
Hello everyone! Thank you for coming together to bring us your feedback on Hosts. We made the decision to remove this feature because it consistently confuses viewers–particularly new viewers or those who are less familiar with Twitch–because they don’t realize the channel they visited is hosting another stream and also they cannot interact with the hosted streamer in chat.
We also hear your feedback and acknowledge the need for community building tools that help promote other streamers. We’ve recently introduced the following features that help you do that:
- We recently released a feature called shoutout that lets you promote another streamer’s channel in your chat and makes it easy for your viewers to follow that channel without leaving your stream. To initiate the shoutout during your stream, use the chat command “/shoutout [channel]” - viewers who do not follow the channel will see a pop-up with a follow button for that channel. If the streamer has an upcoming stream in their schedule, the shoutout will also highlight their next scheduled stream with a button to set a reminder to watch.
- Recommend another stream to viewers when you are offline by adding them to your Suggested Channels list in your channel settings (formerly known as your “Autohost list”). When their channel is live, their stream will appear in the carousel at the top of the page. You can also display your suggested streamers list in your streamer shelf.
We appreciate the feedback you’ve shared, and look forward to new suggestions that help your communities connect with one another.
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dku4live2020 commented
ITS not OK for the little Streamer i dontblike it
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GreatSphynx commented
Bottom line even if you think hosting is a dumb feature and you never use it, streamers should ALWAYS have granular control over what is being show on their page and to their chat whether they are online or offline. If my friend is streaming and its some sort of special event I'm not going to go online just so I can raid them, I would just host them. Suggested Channels is a cool feature and should be AN OPTION, but Twitch your algo doesn't know when my friend is doing their special once in a lifetime stream, and it also sure as **** doesn't know what I want my viewers to be watching at any moment in time. A list of random people is not good enough as the exclusive option.
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GreatSphynx commented
I use hosts as a way to watch stuff with my chat before and after my streams. I just talk in chat, and lots of people stick around or show up ahead of streams. It's a community feature. As someone who has around 4k followers and around 75-150 average viewers part of growing my stream is about trying to actually create a community of people that feel like they can interact with me and I can interact with them. It is absolutely baffling that twitch would basically say "Ok if you want to interact with your community while you're not live you should go do it on a competitor's platform" Because that's basically what they are saying. If I can't talk to my chat in my own chatroom or they cant talk to each other when I'm not live we are just going to all go do it in discord. If this is about keeping people on the site THIS WILL ACTIVELY DRIVE THEM AWAY TWITCH.
Lots of people already follow the channels that I watch pre-post stream. Additionally I don't always want to dump my chat in either an empty chatroom of like a 24/7 stream, or a stream that's a live feed of an aquarium. I want them to be able to come to my chat room and talk with other regulars while watching other content. I also don't want to dump people into a chatroom with 10k people that's going a mile a minute and just lose the ability to still talk to my community IF I WANT (not saying it has to happen every time, I DO still use raids).
It just feels like every year Twitch wants to take away more and more control over what we as streamers choose to show on our page and chat because "it confuses new people" If it confuses people guess what, you make the feature better and clearer, you don't REMOVE the feature that people actively use FOR GOOD REASON. This is the same thing that happened with autohosts. Autohosting was a GODSEND for my channel because I actively moderated for several streamers, in turn they would autohost me it was THE MAIN SOURCE OF FOLLOWERS FOR ME. As soon as they changed it to "suggested channels" My follower count month to month literally dropped to like 1/4 of what it was for the previous year. It absolutely MURDERED the rate at which my channel was growing. I guess Twitch only looks at certain metrics and only listens to the biggest people on the platform. Someone like me who is trying to grow their channel might be "the next big thing" but man are they going to have a **** of a time getting to that point when everything is being pushed towards being algorithmically driven for "engagement"
TLDR: Twitch if you want to fix this and genuinely think it's about confusion then make it less confusing. If a page has raided or hosted and someone shows up while offline have a big dialog box in the middle of the page that says "STREAMER IS OFFLINE AND HAS DIRECTED THEIR VIEWERS TO WATCH THIS CHANNEL WHILE THEY ARE AWAY! WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN THE LIVE STREAM IN PROGRESS OR JOIN OFFLINE STREAMERS CHAT TO WATCH?" and then you put a big JOIN LIVE STREAM, or JOIN OFFLINE CHAT button on it and WOW its impossible to get confused by that. If your users are REALLY that dumb that it would still be confusing maybe you can rename hosting to "Quiet Raiding" cuz somehow you think it's really hard for people to distinguish between a raid and a host.
The best part of it is you wont have the sunk cost of developing a feature that you then removed, THAT MANY STREAMERS USE, and you wont **** off a ton of people.
Seriously stop removing stuff, you already screwed my channel over once by removing autohost. Don't ***** me over again removing hosting for the love of god.
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gamecrazy20_vt commented
Hosting has done more to help me and all my friends grow than raiding could ever do. Removing hosting is one of the dumbest things you could possibly do! It will hurt all streamers and it will hurt Twitch as a whole!
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HeyItsWink commented
Please do NOT remove the hosting feature!
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Super_Wario_128 commented
As a small streamer, hosts are appreciated just as much as raids. It makes me feel good when somebody is hosting my content for their community to see. Please do not remove hosting Twitch.
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drfoxweyman commented
Hosting is am amazing way to help smaller streamers gain more traction, Twitch is such a massive environment that it can be hard for smaller creators to be seen. but hosts allow another avenue of exposure for that group of streamers!
DiffuseMoose made an awesome mock up of how multiple hosts at once could work and I think that's a far better solution! Dunno if links are allowed so I don't wanna post it, but you should go take a look at his twitter for it!
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LemonDingo commented
If their concern is that while hosting people watching from your chat can not interact with the streamer being hosted, then why can they not just make your chat tie into their channel?
I am not a programmer, so I have no idea if that's even possible but I feel like any effort would be worth taking to allow smaller streamers help promote others that they want to promote.
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Hyypnosis commented
I saw a point made by DiffuseMoose on twitter sharing the thought of actually implementing away to host more streamers that I think is just absolutely fantastic. Also I think if twitch viewers want to use a chat as a community page then they should use their own or open a discord server. Honestly I have never even seen this occur in a twitch chat after someone has streamed since a majority of streamers use discord anyway.
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SR_Beannie commented
I voted here. Honestly if Twitch wants to keep shutting down and shoot themselves in the foot, they will continue to lose bigger and bigger streamers and eventually will not be the big dogs anymore. Then they will have to listen and there will be no votes needed for them to have to listen to us. With all the recent actions that have happened in the Twitch community and now they are trying to take useful tools away.... I'm small time and not afraid to be heard. Do your worst to me Twitch, put a stop to my stream being listed or ban my account for speaking up against you. I know what you are capable of doing to people.
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DameDarling commented
From discoverability to keeping charity chains going, and sharing with friends who you're watching HOSTS ARE VITAL.
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Lady_Anette commented
hosting is a nice way to help, and a great way to find new people to watch. it compliment raids and shoutouts. recommending is nice yes but hosting help the algorithm.
On top of that it build community between streamers, yes the chat at the host cant then be used to talk when they of stream, I never seen that done! that community building with waivers outside stream time is more done other places like discord.
please keep hosting and auto hosting, for viewers and streamers benefit. -
Flyer3232 commented
This is exactly how you drive away streamers and viewers, so enjoy having a sharper divide between the Twitch rich and the Twitch poor. This is absolutely 100% designed to **** over small streamers with no regard for them or their well-being. This should be expected since Twitch seems to only care about the mentally ill pay pigs and sacrificial cash cows of the website.
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atom_up_and_at_them commented
Keep the host option. This provides a free way to let the streamer know they are being seen by you as important to share with their community. Removing it will have detrimental impact to sharing and building this community.
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Bichpuddin4 commented
Why take hosting away? Is been around for years and there is not a good reason to do it.
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Bichpuddin4 commented
To get rid of hosting is getting rid of a great way to share and spread new streamers. Getting rid of hosting will prevent new streamers from being recognized more. In return, it will be more difficult to get their name out there. That's not fair for new streamers and they will struggle more.
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F33dbacks commented
HOST is good, removing HOST is bad. #nuffsaid #hostingmatterstoo - also hosting is a fantastic way to discover new streamers, after you removed the friends function this was the only other way to really connect with some of your friends in new and exciting places. Now you take this away...how will I ever know where Vicious Code is hiding....pffffff
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MathHyperzz commented
love the idea, this could help a lot of streamers.
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Just_Paxton commented
Whoever wrote the notice about getting rid of hosting clearly doesn't understand the host feature and how it's used, hosting is one of the only discovery tools on Twitch, and getting rid of it is clearly against the interest of everybody.
I truly hope there is a misunderstanding here, because this decision just doesn't make sense. -
tiberiom commented
Twitch’s Proposed Deprecation of hosts
Twitch's announcement of the proposed deprecation of Hosting has several issues.
It's patently obvious that this is being done so more of Twitch's garbage ad experience can be rammed down your viewers' throats. What i have to say here, is much the same as what i have said (typed) on the previous Mid-roll ads UserVoice page. Instead of taking a “ Beatings will continue until morale improves” attitude, Did anyone think that making the add experience more like Youtube’s would engender more cooperation in general. The simple phrase “ If you have to force it, it's probably ****.” applies here
Raids are not a replacement for hosts. I don’t have the numbers for viewer retention WRT 60 seconds, 5 mins, and 10 mins post raid, But I’d imagine those numbers resemble the ripples after someone chucks a large stone into a lake. and much like that large chunk of viewers that get yeeted into a chatroom, they probably scatter just like ripples on water. Now, again, i don’t have specific numbers to back this up, but if 5+ years of anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, I’d imagine the retention and “ Building of Meaningful Connections” that twitch is so longing for isn’t great.
A bit of postscript for this one, because of all the obfuscation that twitch has done, I’d imagine a large portion of the user base may not realize this. this is a problem that could deserve its own UserVoice page
This Hurts Inter-team events, Charity events, and large collaborative Events. Hosts give streamers an easy way to show that they are live on a different channel. This could be because they are on a Produced show like the Prime Gaming Insider, Participating in the numerous St Jude Play Live charity events like Metal Meal Meltdown, Lobos & Bloodyfaster 4 The Kids! , and Center Stage’s St Jude Play live campaign which has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity, and large team events like Friendsgiving that The Late Shift did recently, where a bunch of streamers like Venalis, Gassymexican, CrReaM, FistofTheWalrus, and more streamers were all together but only streaming to one channel. Hosts are currently, and Should Continue to be an easy way to let your community know how to find you, without the need for an external site like Discord, Twitter, Facebook, et al.
This hurts small streamers. I realize that Twitch leadership may not be fond of small streamers, but by making twitch’s well-known and well-talked-about discoverability issues worse, it becomes even more difficult for small streamers, which effectively cost twitch money, to become large streamers, that bring in the money and “Forge[s] Meaningful connections with Viewers” that twitch so longs for.5
The announcement of this doesn’t give the twitch community enough credit. By announcing this in the way that they did, i understood it as twitch saying that most viewers were too stupid or lazy to figure out how to click a button and join the hosted stream chat. If you have so little faith in your userbase, that a single button is too difficult a UX process, then maybe there are structural UX issues that should be fixed instead of constantly giving the site the ol’ landlord special of a new coat of paint and calling it a new website.
In Conclusion, Removing hosts is a bad idea, and Twitch’s attempt at explaining it is obviously a half-hearted attempt at something resembling PR that just falls over like a cardboard standee in the wind