You have to hand it to Amazon for its choice in nomenclature. Calling the social media feed for its live streaming service Twitch as Pulse is quite amusing.Let’s not get carried away from the main news though. Amazon’s live-streaming video service that is extensively used to broadcast gameplays lacked but one thing, a social media platform. And with Pulse, Amazon has just plugged that hole.
So Pulse is basically a way for creators to communicate directly with their fans. Broadcasters will be able to do stuff like posts videos, images, text and so on, that anyone who follows them will be able to see. The feature is slated to hit global by the middle of the month. The basic premise here is to allow broadcasters and creators to be able to connect with their fans even when they are not necessarily broadcasting.
Speaking on the topic, Twitch communications pro Sheila Raju said:
Now we’re launching a way to make it easier for streamers and viewers to engage with each other on Twitch, whether a stream is live or not. [Pulse is] a place where streamers can post and engage with all of their followers and the greater Twitch community right from the Twitch front page. It’s an always-on way to share clips, stream highlights, schedules, photos, and more so followers are more informed, engaged, and connected.
As far as streamers are concerned, the posts they create on their Channel Feed will also appear on Pulse on the front page of all of their friends & followers. This will enable streamers to interact with those of their followers and viewers that are regularly engaged with their fans.
More importantly though, it will also allow them to reach out to folks that are not so dedicated and might not be able to visit the feed quite so regularly. By interacting with these fans, streamers might be able to win more, new followers while the regular folks themselves, may find themselves stopping to look at a social post via Pulse and finding themselves a great new channel they get addicted to.
Channel Feed will be auto-enabled for all streamers in mid-March.
Pulse will also be appearing on the Twitch Mobile App to allow users to post stuff on the spur of the moment. Meanwhile, at present sharing allows you to post content that falls in either links, text, videos (Vimeo, YouTube, & Twitch), and images (Imgur & Gfycat). However, Twitch is working upon expanding this support in the near future.
Finally, Pulse is not exclusive to creators — although that is where it will have the greatest effect — and any logged-in Twitch user can post and their posts will appear to their friends and followers on their Front Page. Meanwhile, Channel editors & moderators will be walking around watching out for bad or improper stuff. Streamers meanwhile can control who posts on their posts. have the ability to delete posts and comments for channels that they are attached to.
Streamers also have additional controls that allow them to control who can comment on their posts — the current options available are friends & subscribers. All users can react to posts using emotes.
