Twitch adds new tool for streamers to improve engagement with chatters

Twitch this week has introduced an abundance of new features and tools for streamers—and the latest could be the most immediately impactful. 

Chat Highlights and Cues are a way for streamers to get notified and alerted in ways that can enhance how they engage with their chat.

Chat Highlight gives creators the ability to have chat messages from viewers be given a boost if they meet certain stipulations. For instance, if someone is chatting for the first time in your stream, you could have their messages highlighted so you know the person chatting may not have the background information on your channel that other viewers do.

Chat Cues take a different approach to suggesting your behavior with the community. Instead of focusing on the chatters, Chat Cues give streamers suggestions for things they should talk about given audience insights. For instance, a Chat Cue could tell you through your channel’s chat that you should remind people watching to drop the channel a follow so they know the next time you go live.

Cues will only be available to “a selection of streamers” starting today. The Chat Highlight feature, which was originally tested with a smaller pool of streamers, has officially been expanded to all channels, though.

These two features are among a slew of ongoing changes to the platform that includes a new Chat Activity chart that allows streamers to see the flow of messages in their chat during streams. Additionally, the platform earlier this week announced the addition of a new “Shoutout” feature that lets streamers give viewers a boost by telling others to follow them.

The flood of announcements this week follows a week in which Twitch received an abundance of criticism for saying that it intends to cut the revenue share that some creators get for subscriptions.