Twitch may have started out as a way for gaming pros and enthusiasts to share their experience with a wider audience, but over the last couple years it has been expanding its reach to become one of the top live video platforms on the planet. Back in 2015 the company launched Twitch Creative, a new venture that gave those with artistic talent an outlet to showcase and even make money off their creative process. This has remained quite popular for some time. And with Instagram and YouTube bursting onto the scene to allow for live social interaction, Twitch reacted with Twitch IRL, a section of the website dedicated to live-streaming non-gaming related tasks.
Twitch IRL has been quite a hit since launch, but the areas you could stream were previously limited to wherever your computer was. This caused a bit of an issue, because it only allowed for streaming in places you were connected to a Wi-Fi network – mainly your house or a coffee shop. In a recent update by the company, Twitch decided that it wants you to be able to live-stream your daily life a little more naturally, and what better platform to do that from but your phone?
The update is coming to both Android and iOS devices, and allows users to start a live stream directly from the Twitch app on their mobile device. In this way, professional gamers and personalities alike will have one centralized place where they can share their experience with fans, instead of hopping over to something else like Instagram or Facebook.
The update also brings a UI revamp, adding a new navigation bar and interface options, along with dedicated mobile streaming options. Twitch’s product director Tom Robertson says that the mobile app has been an extremely strong part up the service, with more than 83 million installs across platforms.
The change can likely be attributed in part to Joaquim Vergès, ex-Twitter Android developer who originally created the third-party app Falcon Pro. After spending some time helping Twitter improve their own app, Joaquim took a job with Twitch to work on the Android app back in March of this year. With a revamp this large and aggressive, we can only assume he had a part to play in the process.
Now we want to hear from you! Do you use Twitch, and if so, do you use the mobile app? I personally used in quite a few years ago, but dropped it after it began using copious amounts of background data. That’s likely been fixed by now, so maybe i’ll give it another shot.