Today I was catching up on the last part of the Stream On finale that I didn't get to watch live, since I had to start my stream, when I noticed something different about the twitch viewer. I immediately asked Twitch and Twitch Support on twitter about it, because I hadn't noticed it prior to today. While I received no response from either Twitch or Twitch Support, I also asked DJ Wheat and Anna if they would discuss it on Twitch Weekly as a new feature; however, the like button also seemed to be new to them as well, as they didn't have an official response. DJ Wheat did mention that it was probably a part of the removal of the Pulse and Channel Feed features on Twitch to be replaced with Discovery or Recommended Feed based on things you "liked".
I have some seriously strong feelings about this if that is the case. Over the past two years, Twitch has become a serious competitor to go head to head with YouTube in the the space of video. They have also been directly courting big YouTubers to jump to Twitch, and enticing smaller creators, with the promise of better financial gain in the affiliate program, after YouTube kicked them to the curb in February. As a business person, I can understand adopting familiar tools to make transitioning from one platform to another easy and intuitive to users, but adding a like button hurts my bleeding purple heart.
Before phasing out the Channel Feed, users could use Emotes to interact with creator posts in the Feed. Currently users can still Emote to react to Clips, and in my opinion this is what Twitch should do INSTEAD of "Likes". Emotes are completely on Brand with Twitch, and can be easily adapted to a similar system to provide the data needed for an algorithm. Instead of "like" and "dislike", Twitch could do BleedPurple and FailFish or TwitchUnity and ResidentSleeper. They've done just that on their subReddit by replacing upvote/downvote with BleedPurple and PanicBasket. This keeps the same premise, but preserves the Twitch brand. The thought of in two months time hearing Twitch Broadcasts say "SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON" makes me cringe at a over 9000 level.
Part of the reason creators are making the move to Twitch is that they ARE different than YouTube. In March of this year, Twitch made a classic YouTube mistake, and rolled out a new feature (emailing subs asking why they stopped subscribing phrased in a way it sounded like a guilt trip) without consulting it's creators, allowing them to opt in or out, or even telling them it was being added. The lack of communication from YouTube is one of the biggest complaints from creators, and Twitch made the same misstep. However, unlike YouTube, they immediately apologized and rolled back the feature and made us breathe a sign of relief that Twitch would stay Twitch and "do better". The appearance of this "like" button smacks of another YouTubesque misstep. No communication, not even internally within the Brand, and even mimics YT's algorithm with the "like" system and how it operates.
While having an algorithm introduced on Twitch gives me SERIOUS misgivings as a small creator on the platform, please Twitch, communicate, and at least keep it on brand.
