Monday, December 19, 2016

Follower-Only Chat feature for Twitch.tv

New Feature: Follower-Only Chat

A new feature has been pushed out to a select number of partner streamers (update - everyone has this feature now) called "Follower-Only Chat"! It allows you or your mods to restrict chat based on how long viewers have followed the channel. You can set it to 0 minutes or to a maximum of 3 months.

Some example commands to enable the feature:
  • /followers 30m, or /followers
    Viewers need to follow to chat for 30 minutes.
  • /followers 2h, or /followers
    Viewers need to follow to chat for 1 hours.
  • /followers 2d, or /followers
    Viewers need to follow to chat for 2 days.
  • /followers 1w, or /followers
    Viewers need to follow to chat for 1 week.
  • /followers 3mo, or /followers
    Viewers need to follow to chat for 3 months.
You can also enable or disable the feature using the cogwheel in the chat box. And they also have some default time frames for the feature if you don't want to setup your own custom time.


I have just started using it and already see a notable difference in the chat, and the amount of followers gained per day.

Follower-Only Chat Stats Twitch.tv
If a viewer isn't following your channel and you have this feature enabled they will be alerted with the following text when they attempt to chat in your channel.

"This room is in 5 minutes followers-only mode. Follow daopa to join the community!"

Follower-Only Chat Alert

I setup a 5 minute time frame for my channel, if you setup a different time it will list it in the alert.

The PRO's and CON's of using this new feature for your twitch.tv channel.

  • Pro's
    • Allows you to prevent spam bots from spamming links and other text in chat.
    • Unwanted raid chat prevention
    • Trolls who get banned and create new accounts will have to wait longer to keep up the trolling.  Most likely they wont even bother and leave the channel due to the time restriction.
    • Can be used as some long time loyalty perk, rewarding long time channel followers.
    • Similar to Sub-Only chat blocking but with out the pay wall.
  • Con's
    • Some viewers will not like being restricted from chat and will possibly leave your channel due to that reason.
    • 3rd party websites that have embedded streams and chat may not have the ability for viewers to follow.
Additional Notes
This feature is in a experimental phase but pretty sure if all goes well they will push this out to all broadcasters of twitch.tv soon. Update - this feature has been rolled out to everyone.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016

New dashboard interface goes live at twitch.tv!

New Dashboard interface made available to all streamers at twitch.tv!

Twitch just pushed a update to the dashboard interface for all streamers which makes the menus rearrangeable and collapsible. Handy to switch around the board and hide away parts you don't really use on a daily basis.

Here is how the new dashboard looks from default:


Panel Sections include the following:
  • Announcements - seems they will use this to link updates, status message and news articles.
  • Stream Information - use this to set your stream title, broadcast language, and what game your currently playing.
  • Stream Health - shows if your stream is configured correctly, the status and additional information for troubleshooting problems via Twitch Inspector.
  • Video Preview - displays your stream on the dashboard.
  • Stats - variety of different statistics for your stream.
    • The number of people currently watching the stream.
    • How long you have been streaming for in the current session.
    • Number of clips that have been made.
    • Total number of channel views.
    • Number of followers
  • Host - view all the different channels hosting your stream. 
  • Run Commercial (Partners Only) - slider showing a ad block time frame with a button to trigger advertisements.
You can still access the old dashboard interface at the moment by visiting the link in the announcements section or by adding the following parameter to the end of the dashboard url "/dashboard?show_previous=true"

Here is a screenshot of the old dashboard interface:

Advantages of the new dashboard over the old is pretty straight forward, you can hide sections and make the dashboard alot smaller taking up a small amount of screen space.
Saturday, December 3, 2016

Moderator Chat Commands List

Listed here are all the various chat commands moderators can do on Twitch.tv!
  • Timeout
    /timeout username seconds reason
  • Ban
    /ban username
  • Unban
    /unban username
  • Subscriber Only Chat
    /subscribers
    This room is now in subscribers-only mode.

    /subscribersoff
    This room is no longer in subscribers-only mode.
  • R9K - attempts to filters out copy, repetitive text
    /r9kbeta
    This room is now in r9k mode.

    /r9kbetaoff
    This room is no longer in r9k mode.
  • Slowmode
    /slow 60
    This room is now in slow mode. You may send messages every 60 seconds.
    You can change the 60 to how many seconds you use the slow mode to be.

    /slowoff
    This room is no longer in slow mode.
  • Emote Only mode
    /emoteonly
    This room is now in emote-only mode.

    /emoteonlyoff
    This room is no longer in emote-only mode.
  • Follower-Only Chat
    /followers 5m
    This room is in 5 minute followers-only mode. Follow to join the community.
    Note: You can set it to 0 minutes or to a maximum of 3 months.