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.

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!"

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.

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.

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.
   

Series 1 shows up in hosting stats

What is "Series 1" in Twitch Stats for hosting mean? 

If you have checked your stats on the dashboard for who is hosting your channel, pretty sure you will see something called "Series 1" in the list. Here is a screenshot of today's hosting stats from my channel.

• Series 1: 40

When someone hosts your channel, they will show up on the dashboard in the section right under playing. Series 1 has never been listed there so I started to wonder what can this stat mean that's showing up here?

Oddly enough while checking other stats out, I found a link! Here is a screenshot of the same Video Play's section but with a different filter by which is "Player Type".

• android: 40

Turns out its something related to android and/or mobile users and may have nothing to do with hosting.

Undefined showing up in stats

What does undefined mean when you are looking at Twitch.tv URL Videoplay stats?

For the longest time I have been wondering what undefined is when you are looking at Video Plays by URL filter for stats on the dashboard. And it turns out it was really simple to figure out what exactly it was by using the other filters.

 

Here is a screenshot of the Video Plays by URL set.

• player.twitch.tv: 500
• undefined: 40
• www.twitch.tv: 20

Now here is another screenshot of the exact time frame but instead of by "URL", its by "Player Type".

• embed: 500
• android: 40
• site: 20

As it turns out, Android matches in both sections, so when you are checking by URL, the undefined really means android users i.e. Mobile.

Undefined issue solved, now to the player.twitch.tv problem.

The URL stats use to show domain names for all the different websites that had your stream embedded on but due to changes to the embed code its now showing everything as player.twitch.tv.

I have made a suggestion on twitch's uservoice section for a additional parameter we can add to have some sort of tracking of numbers from the various embed sites. Lets see if that gets any traction!

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