Earn Free Twitch Bits

Learn how to get free twitch bits by taking surveys and watching interactive ads.

Twitch is slowly rolling out a new feature for stream viewers to earn ways to get free bits. I was lucky enough to have the option available and did some testing of how it works.  The system is pretty easy all it takes is around 30 seconds for each interaction ad to play and your bits account will be credited with at least 5 bits.

• First check for the option if its available to you, it will show up here on the bits popup section.
  Look for it on the top of the popup saying, "Get 5 or more Bits by watching short ads." If you have trouble finding a Twitch Partner that has bits enabled, visit my channel which is enabled for bits at http://twitch.tv/daopa.
  
  
  
  
  
• Then click on the button that says Watch AD, usually a short survey starts up
  
  
  
  
  or a interactive ad that lasts around 30 seconds.
  
  
  

• Make sure to click on the "I'm done" at the top right corner to successfully get credit and close out the pop up ad.

Once you have bit credit, you can use this on any channel that has cheer bits enabled. If you would like to test it out and send a small tip to my channel here is the link!

How to cheer

Using your newly acquired bits to cheer on a enabled partner stream is also very easy. Just type "cheer" + the number of bits you want to cheer.

1 bit is equal to 1 cent.

100 bits is equal to 1 dollar.

FAQ's

Question: What is the highest bit reward for viewing a advertisement?

Answer: 100

Question: Why am I not getting the option anymore to earn free bits? Its greyed out and has been for many months on in!

Answer: This has happened to one of my accounts, it doesn't work anymore for many months.  I can only assume there is a bug or the account is flagged to not trigger anymore.  Lucky for me I have a couple of Twitch accounts which work just fine. Try making another Twitch account and see if this issue gets resolved.

General Tip: Ads go thru seasonal changes,  some months advertisement spending is very low while others are really high. This may cause the "Try again later" watch ad box (greyed out) to show up more often.

Twitch Prime

Twitch Prime was just announced during Twitchcon 2016 keynote with Emmet Shear

What exactly is Twitch Prime?
Its basically Amazon Prime but with added bonuses for the Twitch.tv platform.

Twitch Prime adds the following:

• Free game loot every month
• Ad-free viewing on Twitch
  Note Twitch Turbo currently does this and costs 8.99 per month
• Exclusive Emotes and Chat badge
• One Free Channel subscription every 30 days.
  Note regular subs cost 4.99 per month.

Some of the many Amazon Prime benefits include the following:

• FREE Two-Day Shipping
  On eligible items to addresses in the contiguous U.S. and other shipping benefits
• FREE Same-Day Delivery in eligible zip codes.
• Discount on new-released box games sold by Amazon during per-ordering and the first 2 weeks after launch.
• Prime Now: Get FREE two-hour delivery or scheduled delivery on over 10,000 items, from groceries to electronics and more. Plus, get free delivery from your favorite local stores. Available in eligible zip codes only. 

Full Details about Amazon Prime and benefits are available here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200444160

If you already have Amazon Prime all you need to do is to link up your Twitch account at http://twitchprime.com/

How much does Twitch Prime cost?
Its cost exactly the same as Amazon Prime 10.99 per month.

If you are a Twitch user who already subscribes to one channel and pay for Twitch Turbo, Twitch Prime is a better deal.

• Twitch Turbo 8.99/per month + One Channel sub 4.99/per month = 13.98
  vs
• Twitch Prime at 10.99 per month
  Savings of 2.99 per month

Which countries is Twitch Prime available in currently?

• US
• Canada
• Italy
• France
• Germany
• Spain
• UK

Automatically Host other channels

Auto Hosting Feature just added to channel settings for all Twitch Broadcasters.

A new feature has just launched at Twitch.tv that will allow broadcasters to automatically host other channels when their streams go offline.

Check it out by navigating to your channel settings section.
URL: https://www.twitch.tv/settings/channel

---

Settings Include the following:

• Auto Hosting
  • Toggle all forms of auto hosting: teammates, host list, and similar channels.
• Team Hosting
  • Automatically host random channels from your team when you're not live.
  • Team channels will be hosted before any channels in your host list.
• Host List
  • Add channels to your list to auto host them.
  • Auto host channels similar to yours
  • Channels in your team and list will always be hosted first
• Host Priority
  • Host channels randomly from the list.
  • Host channels by the order they appear in the list.

---

Another hidden feature that maybe beneficial for some broadcasters to check out is the "view" option under the Host lists for similar channels.


If you have been streaming for a while, it should populate similar broadcasters which you can then use to network purposes. These broadcasters maybe good options for creating teams, cross streaming and many other activities that can create good synergies.


Opinion:
Overall great feature for teams, makes it easier to manage since its automated. Not sure about the hosting similar channels automatic feature. I'm in the camp its better to know who you are hosting and have permission before just randomly hosting.

Twitch Staff on reddit list

Quick list of twitch staff that are active on the subreddit for twitch.tv. 

Twitch Staff on reddit list:

optimizeprime
CEO
https://www.reddit.com/user/optimizeprime

djWHEAT
Director of Programming
http://www.reddit.com/user/djWHEAT

Xangold
Engineering Team / Support
http://www.reddit.com/user/Xangold

FishStix1
Twitch Staff / Esports
http://www.reddit.com/user/FishStix1

hbokhari
Partnerships
http://www.reddit.com/user/hbokhari

chhopsky
Network Engineer
http://www.reddit.com/user/chhopsky

Pugget
Network / Tech
http://www.reddit.com/user/Pugget

alephprime
Team VOD
http://www.reddit.com/user/alephprime

misterslin
http://www.reddit.com/user/misterslin

slimscsi
http://www.reddit.com/user/slimscsi

Mucx
Design
http://www.reddit.com/user/Mucx

BlackLiteAttack
Partnerships Associate
http://www.reddit.com/user/BlackLiteAttack

IrelandOfEndor
Software Engineer
http://www.reddit.com/user/IrelandOfEndor

kixelated
http://www.reddit.com/user/kixelated

x410
http://www.reddit.com/user/x410

spla08
Community Manager of Education
http://www.reddit.com/user/spla08

b3george
Admin / Support
http://www.reddit.com/user/b3george

heresiarch
Data Scientst
http://www.reddit.com/user/heresiarch 

S0N0S
Moderation Lead
http://www.reddit.com/user/S0N0S

filmsushi
Video Ingest and Transcoding
http://www.reddit.com/user/filmsushi

BlitzTech
Web Playback Manager
http://www.reddit.com/user/BlitzTech

Equint
Video Player Engineer
http://www.reddit.com/user/Equint

nerolabs
Director of Engineering
http://www.reddit.com/user/nerolabs

flgr
Viewcount Lead
http://www.reddit.com/user/flgr

AcenthTwitch
Desktop Developer
http://www.reddit.com/user/AcenthTwitch

tdrobbo
Senior Director of Product
http://www.reddit.com/user/tdrobbo

Mowseler
Desktop Support
http://www.reddit.com/user/Mowseler

eviegleep
Community Manager
http://www.reddit.com/user/eviegleep

Use the list to review what the staff have been chatting about on the Twitch subreddit. Many times it gives some insights on current problems, future updates and key platform changes that are not generally announced.

Embedding Twitch on Twitter.

Quick guide on how to embed Twitch.tv live stream player on Twitter.

Follow these steps to get your stream embedded inside Twitter.

Step 1.

Create a html file with the basic Twitter card player meta data in the header section.

Example:

<html>
<head>
<meta name="twitter:image" content="PUT_URL_TO_LOGO_192x192_HERE" />
<meta name="twitter:card" content="player" />
<meta name="twitter:title" content="My Live stream" />
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Today's live stream will focus on awesome. Click play to watch now!" />
<meta name="twitter:player" content="https://player.twitch.tv/?channel=PUT_UR_TWITCH_CHANNEL_ID_HERE&html5&muted=true&quality=mobile&parent=twitter.com&parent=cards-frame.twitter.com&parent=cards-dev.twitter.com&parent=tweetdeck.twitter.com" />
<meta name="twitter:player:width" content="360" />
<meta name="twitter:player:height" content="200" />
<title>Live Stream Twitter Card</title>
</head>
<body>
This is a test page for Twitter Player Card
</body>
</html>


Make sure to input the correct and wanted values in the sections. You will want to change many of the values here under title, description and image. Once you complete this upload it to your website.

Step 2.

Go to Twitter's Card Validator, enter the URL of the page you uploaded to your website and preview the card to see if its working correctly. If all is setup correctly you will then need to submit for approval. Twitters Player Card is not available for use until they review it and enable it for your website.

For more information on Twitter Player Card and approval guides make sure to check out their documentation here.

Step 3.

Once your player card is validated and your website is white listed for player card use you can then take that URL created for the player card and post it to Twitter.

Here is a example of a tweet with Twitch Live stream embedded on Twitter.

And that's pretty much all there is to getting your live stream on twitter. If you have any questions or comments fill free to post here, on twitter or on the live stream.

Other / Advanced Options

For advanced users some additional recommendations to use when created a file.  Twitter has a cache mechanism which will not save old card meta data if the URL has been submitted recently. If you use one file and change the title, description the tweets will refresh with the latest title and description.  To get around this you can use "QueryStrings", this will take a tiny bit of programming to setup but once its done it will fix the caching issue.

No Man's Sky PS4 Launch Day

Today is No Man's Sky launch day for Playstation 4 on Twitch.

Twitch is showing over 700+ streamers with 75,000 total viewers at 8/9 11:00 AM EST. Here is a quick snapshot of the No Man's Sky directory.

Majority of the viewers are bunched up in the top 50 or so streams. I will be streaming this game during the PC launch on Aug 12. The PC version still is getting tweaks and fixes which has caused some delays. Until then I will be creating a small blog for No Man's Sky to log my journey thru the vast infinite galaxy!

------
Update, Aug 12 Launch for PC version showed at around 2 PM EST time 3775 Streamers with 96k viewers.

No Man's Sky DMCA Takedowns

No Man's Sky is a upcoming title that I'm looking forward to playing and streaming on Twitch. The game officially comes out August 9 on PS4 North America, August 10th on PS4 in Europe, and then on PC worldwide on August 12th.

Taking a look at the Twitch.tv Directory for No Man's Sky and you can already see many PS4 streamers streaming away.

Throughout this week many No Man's Sky PS4 streams have been taken down due to DMCA violations. Twitch has a 3 strike policy when it comes to DMCA violations. Basically the channel is suspended for 24 hours on first 2 strikes and then would be permanently banned on 3rd. I would also assume channels are sent a notice of the DMCA violation.

Opinion:

• That being said, are all these pre-release streams eating away the hype factor for a fresh new game?
  
  • I would say yes, and it will eroad away curious viewers for launch day. People are consuming a unpatched version of the game that has bugs and other game play anomalies that most likely will not be there on launch day.

• Is one of the issues the ease of streaming via consoles a problem?
  
  • Yes! not so long ago in order to live stream from a console you needed a capture card and a PC setup. But now the new gen consoles have build in streaming making it very easy for just about anyone to live stream to Twitch.

• Are some streamers exploiting the 3 strike rule to gain followers for launch day?
  
  • Sadly it appears there is a couple of streamers who are using a leaked copy of the game in order to build a viewerbase for the future. Being able to stream the game before anyone else on Twitch can assist with obtaining followers for this niche. The better the broadcaster and gimmicks used to get follows + loyalty the more gains for the future. For instance being world first is pretty big accomplishment for getting your name out there.  Especially when it comes to spoilers about a highly hyped game like No Man's Sky.
  • Good example for NMS is the guy who paid a couple thousand for a copy of No Man's Sky a week or 2 ago off of ebay. He managed to live stream it and also has been providing many spoilers. If this guy streams day one launch on Twitch, his channel will probably  be one of the more viewed channels due to being established already with providing spoilers and game details before anyone else.

Another issue that has happened with No Man's Sky is the release date for PC has just been pushed to Aug 12 from Aug 9.  The game developer sent out the following tweet:

Talk about last minute, I ponder how many PC Streamers will be on the edge to purchase a PS4 in order to stream NMS on launch day? For me personally I can wait until Aug 12, I cant stand console controllers anymore.