Amazon’s Twitch launches TikTok rival amid push to ban the Chinese app, boosting competition in short-form video
- Twitch, the live-streaming platform known for video game content, has launched Discovery Feed, allowing users to scroll through short clips from longer videos
- A recently passed law in the US is seeking to force China’s ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a ban in the country
Creators on Twitch typically live-stream themselves playing video games or chatting with audiences, sometimes for up to eight hours at a time. The new service, called Discovery Feed, allows viewers to scroll through short clips taken from those longer videos. It appears as a new tab on Twitch’s mobile app.
Discovery Feed has a ways to go before becoming a significant rival to TikTok. Early posts viewed by Bloomberg included an Arizona State University professor welcoming students to class and a streamer getting attacked on the street.
Unlike TikTok, Twitch creators generally don’t upload their own short-form content. Instead users pick out funny or entertaining segments from creators’ live streams and turn them into clips.
The Discovery Feed will be “personalised based on a viewer’s watch history and real-time interactions”, a Twitch spokesperson said.
That will potentially include mature content, provided it meets Twitch’s guidelines, the spokesperson said.