Twitch x Kick: The problem with Clip Discovery

The competition between Twitch and Kick should bring a lot of new things and solve some problems for streamers and one of these problems is the discovery of clips from channels, which Kick wants to solve on its platform, bringing an experience more related to TikTok.

On this issue, Marcus Graham aka djWHEAT gave his opinion. He, who was once Director of Creative Development at Twitch, stated that the solution to this problem is not that simple.

Responding to a tweet that criticized Twitch’s channel clip discovery system and praised the solution found by the folks at Kick, publicized by streamer Trainwreck, Marcus Graham stated:

“It’s pretty easy to make yourself better than Twitch by just telling everyone what they want to hear, but the reality is, this is an incredibly complex problem to solve (Twitch has tried for years).

It’s a problem that seems easy to solve, but it just isn’t. And hearing people talk and act like it is easy to solve makes them sound like clowns.”

Is having an idea innovation? Or is executing it innovation? It's pretty easy to make yourself better than Twitch by just telling everyone what they want to hear, but the reality is, this is an incredibly complex problem to solve (Twitch has tried for years).
— djWHEAT (@djWHEAT) March 15, 2023

Twitch clips with TikTok system? No so fast…

According to Trainwreck, Kick is implementing a channel clip discovery system similar to the one used by TikTok. But, for Marcus Graham, this system may not be as efficient for a live streaming platform.

According to the former director of Twitch, people do not use the platform for short videos and, therefore, clips are only successful when shared on other social networks. He explains that, likewise, lives on TikTok are not as successful as regular videos, as users on that platform are there for the short videos, not the live streams.

The large amount of clips can be a problem for Kick

Still in his tweets, Marcus Graham explained that the large amount of clips generated per minute on Twitch prevents the implementation of solutions such as those cited by Trainwreck.

“The amount of clips generated per minute is insane. Most of the clips generated are bad and only get a few views. A tiny percentage are viewed b/c of their sharability (reddit).

Clips are a pretty amazing discovery tool on a HUB platform like Reddit, but people underestimate user behavior. It’s the same reason why TikTok livestreams are a fraction of their normal viewership, because people open TikTok for consuming shorter content.”

In another tweet, he commented on the clips liking system that will be implemented by Kick and that, according to them, can help with the channel discovery system:

“If you think a voting system is going to solve this problem when there are 100k clips an hour, then I don’t know what to tell you. Right now Kick is averaging 10-15 clips an hour. How come no one ever wants to think about scale? It’s just not as simple as, ‘I made a like button’.”