Last week Twitch, Amazon’s popular livestreaming service, came out with a particularly cool plan. At its annual TwitchCon event earlier this year, the platform announced its own foray into vertical video. This shrewd strategic play makes the platform much more competitive. In doing so, it takes aim at other competing vertical video services such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.
The announcement confirmed that Twitch is currently beta testing the vertical video option. It hasn’t been deployed extensively so far. Unlike Twitch, these tests will initially focus on a smaller niche of streamers. This method allows Twitch to gather useful feedback from the community in advance while minimizing negative impact on all users. This feature is a great way to address the growing consumer demand for mobile-ready content consumption. It leans into the increasing popularity of all things vertical.
Twitch has the idea of making onboarding series educational conversations through live chats. These dialogs will help welcome the ignorant newcomers by saying “It’s OK! Vertical video is here! These behaviors and dialogs signal to users that the feature is not finalized. Users will have the option to revert back to the traditional horizontal view at any time should they wish to do so. This considerate method is entirely designed to guide users into this updated schema while keeping them familiar and comfortable with the features they’ve grown accustomed to using.
For example, Twitch has built-in camera and microphone permission handling protocols. This helps ensure that users interact with the app smoothly throughout the course of the livestream. This move is another example of Twitch’s promise to uphold a reliable, comfortable platform while expanding into original, premium content development.
Whether you’re working on a TikTok or a YouTube short, vertical video is now the most popular form factor for digital content. Research from AppSensa indicates that Twitch has been working on this feature for years already. The study found a number of mentions in the app’s code that indicate vertical video capabilities were being developed.
A Twitch spokesperson confirmed to us that these tests are small in scope. They intend to open access to a wider range of users in the fall of this year. Twitch’s slow rollout strategy is a product of the platform’s careful incubation of innovation, prioritizing the user experience while still creating exciting new avenues for interaction.
Twitch is taking a completely different approach with its new vertical video format. Most importantly, it should be very interesting to see how users react to this change! By integrating this feature, Twitch aims to attract a broader audience and adapt to changing viewer preferences in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.