Twitch is the world’s leading video platform and community for gamers with more than 45 million gamers gathering every month to broadcast, watch and chat.
Twitch today is introducing a suite of tools called Twitch Extensions that will allow its streamers to customize their channel pages with interactive features, including polls, leaderboards, tickers, schedules, overlays and even virtual pets, among other things.
Beyond simply personalizing their channel to make it more engaging to fans, the extensions in some cases will help streamers generate additional revenue.
In particular, one extension called “Gear on Amazon” allows Twitch creators to show off their favorite Amazon products.
If a viewer clicks through to purchase, the creator will earn a commission through the Amazon Associates program.
This extension will be available to both Twitch Partners and Affiliates, and is the first time that Twitch’s streamers have been invited to join the program, even though Amazon owns Twitch.
To create their list of suggested products, streamers will be able to sign up as an Amazon Affiliate, then browse the Amazon catalog and pick their favorite products, right from their Twitch dashboard, the company says.
This follows another recent move from Amazon to help video creators make money by promoting Amazon products, as it turns out.
Last week, Amazon opened up its social media “Influencers” program to YouTube stars, allowing video creators to build their own curated shop, with its own short and memorable URL. It only makes sense that Amazon would enable something similar for its Twitch streamers, as well.
However, the Amazon extension is only one of many that will be available at launch. There are currently over 20 extensions available, including some game-specific ones like OP.gg for League of Legends by OP.gg, Innkeeper: Interactive Hearth Overlay by Curse, and MasterOverwatch by Master Network.
Others are designed for more general use, like Streamlabs’ Loyalty, Music, Polls & Games, or Muxy’s Overlay and Leaderboard, for example.
At launch, extensions will be free, but Twitch tells us that monetization details are soon to come. More information about this will be announced at Twitch’s developer conference, TwitchCon’s Developer Day next month.
Twitch had planned to make the extensions available to streamers tonight, but that’s been pushed back at the last minute. Instead, the company now says the extensions will be “coming soon.”