A Guide to Twitch Communities

Published by Emergence on

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Created as a way to help viewers discover new streamers, Twitch Communities were released in February 2017 to all streamers to help them share the content to relevant groups of people. Streamers could stream to three separate Communities are the same time.

In September 2018, Twitch removed Communities and replaced them with Tags.

Say hello to tags and new categories.

Two of several big discovery changes coming in September.

Read about them all on our Discovery Updates site: https://t.co/uHo7D6hPze pic.twitter.com/4xrUCdS9bX— Twitch (@Twitch)


What was a Twitch Community?

Initially disliked, Communities have grown into actual legitimate communities of people who follow a certain game, game style, location, genre, a team (company) or streamer personality.

Twitch describes a community as:

“Communities are a new discovery tool to help streamers connect to the most relevant audiences and help viewers discover streams that fit their interests easier and faster than ever.”

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How could I join a Twitch Community?

Although you cannot ‘join’ a Community permanently, you can select them on your dashboard (just below your game selection). When you start streaming, you will appear within these communities — these are displayed from most popular to least in the same style as game channels.

As you can now stream to three separate Communities, I encourage streamers to make use of this as much as possible and consider which ones are most relevant to them.

In the same way that we do not recommend you stream the most popular game, we do not suggest streaming to the most popular communities as you will likely be drowned out by the biggest names. Find those where you can stand out and become a key voice in the ‘community’.

Viewers can also follow communities by pressing the ❤ when they land on the Community page.

Did you know we have a helpful community on our Discord server?

Creating your own Community

If your account is over 3 months old and you’ve set up 2nd-factor authentication, you are able to create up to five communities.

You may want to do this based around a certain game, creative style, genre or even your own team (of friends and gaming buddies).

Tips for being in a Twitch Community

Look at who else is active in the Community, why not join their chat and become friends?

You can host them after your stream, or set them as auto hosts within your settings

You could even be sneaky and raid them during your streams
Do they have a Discord channel that you can join and interact with?

Follow their Twitter, follow communities members and engage with them

In September 2018, Twitch removed Communities and replaced them with Tags.

Bonus Round

Our favourite Twitch Communities include:

  • Chillstreams
  • SmallStreamerCommunity
  • ParadoxInteractive
  • TwitchKittens

P.S. here’s an awesome giant mega-thread of teams & communities: www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/6zgyjt/twitch_teamcommunity_megathread/

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