Twitch to Introduce New ‘Channel Surfing’ Feature!

Despite not really ‘following’ many channels, I have to admit that when I’m looking to kill a bit of time (or simply require a bit of background noise) I occasionally have a look on Twitch to see if anyone’s playing anything I’m interested in. – It has to be said though that I’m not a huge fan of the overall way streams are listed on the service.

Invariably, it only ever tends to ‘recommend’ me already huge channels, and no offence to those of you who do, but I have no interest in joining the 5,000 people watching someone painting their toenails. – If you feel the same way as me, however, then following a new Twitter post, a new feature is heading to the platform that might be set to make things a lot more interesting for those just trying to find something worth watching!

Twitch to Introduce ‘Channel Surf’ Feature

This new Twitch feature will allow you to start skipping randomly from channel to channel offering a 60-second preview without any adverts. The idea is clearly designed to help people find something to watch when nothing else is immediately presenting itself (or any of the channels you do like are offline). – While this might certainly help fix one of Twitch’s biggest problems, however, (in finding something to watch without traversing their pretty crap menu system) that doesn’t still mean to say that this will be perfect.

The biggest issue Twitch has, in my opinion, is that it only really tends to promote already successful channels. It’s a huge problem for people starting out where with the lack of anything better than just streaming as often as you can and hope you eventually gain some traction (with a huge slice of algorithm luck) you’ll eventually ‘make it’.

My concern though is that this ‘channel surfing’ feature will predominantly look to latch itself to the bigger channels. What I’d like is a feature that specifically allows you to surf channels where view counts are low, and, from what I can see, you’re not going to be given that option. – This could be a huge boon to new or low-profile streamers, but I suspect that it’s not going to pan out that way.

Still, it’s a step in the right direction and with some tweaking, this could prove to be a decent addition.

What do you think? Do you think this is a feature you will use? If not, what would you suggest as a potential alternative? – Let us know in the comments!