TWITCH NOW FEATURES PUBLIC AND PRIVATE CHAT ROOMS

Amazon-owned streaming giant, Twitch, announced a new chat-room feature that will exist outside the standard Twitch chat lives on the right-hand side of live streams.

The new product goes by the name Rooms, and these chats will be both public and private chats that streamers can set up for viewers and subscribers to interact with a streamer and each other around dedicated topics or themes. Streamers would be able to set up a chat room specifically for subscribers only and leave it open 24 hours a day, even when the streamer is not live, so discussions can take place at around the clock and even when the channel is inactive.

Rooms is now available for all users worldwide on the web and on mobile, with the feature coming to Twitch's desktop client sometime in the near future. “Whether you want a room for spoilers, permanent sub-only chat, or even a room for moderators to sharpen their swords, Rooms lets streamers set a topic and choose who has access,” writes Brian Petrocelli, a member of Twitch’s product marketing team, in a blog post. “Plus it’s just like stream chat, all your badges and emotes carry over.”

Twitch's twist to chatting online is to make its own chat rooms more customisable, based on the needs of streamers and the request of their fan bases. It also benefits Twitch to capitalise on these viewership communities by keeping their discussion and overall fan activity on its own platform. The company says Rooms came about from community feedback regarding requested new features. Twitch also says its community guidelines – which include recently revised policies around harassment and sexual behaviour released earlier this month – apply to Rooms, as those policies are service-wide and applicable at every level.