Amazon will thus reach the method of not-that-known Twitch streamers with affluent viewers abuse the function to push the people in question to the top.

During the Patch Notes developer stream, Twitch announced a new function called Boost. With it, the viewers can effectively pay Amazon to advertise the streamer they watch so that this person can show up in Twitch’s Recommended Channels section. The function is currently being tested with a limited number of users, and the example showed that you could get three thousand impressions for 2 dollars and 97 cents.

But how is this method any different from view botting? That method has someone pay X money for a shady company to have Y viewers on their broadcast, which might even get the user into the Recommended Channels section. And with Boost, you pay Amazon to have the privilege of possibly getting more viewers. There isn’t much of a difference and both cuts corners in organic growth.

However, this function will grow the already popular channels’ viewership, as those accounts’ viewers can also use Boost. Since a bigger channel has a higher chance of a wealthier viewer, they are more likely to open their wallets to keep their favourite at the top. So if there’s a monopoly, it will remain as such with Boost.

Boost’s concept already showed up last year on Twitch. However, in 2020, it worked with channel points and not with real money. (In short, channel points are available for affiliates and partners. To be a Twitch affiliate, you need to have 50+ followers and an average of at least three viewers. You can then get points for watching their streams, and you can spend points to make the streamer do the goal set for that channel point amount.)

Does Amazon need money this much? Twitch doesn’t have weak viewership…

Source: VG247