Twitch Cheering Will Sell You Bits You Can Use For Your Favorite Streams

Twitch is the place where many gamers stream their prowess as the frag and narrate their favorite games. Users of Twitch have always been able to chat and comment on streams, but Twitch now has a new way where you can cheer on your favorite streamers and earn badges for yourself in the process. Twitch has always offered subscriptions, one way that streamers can see their support from fans.

Cheering allows another way to support that with the caveat that for you to cheer on your favorite folks, you have to purchase Bits. Once you buy those bits, you can cheer on your favorite folks by typing emoticons into the chat message window. To do so the user types "cheer" and then enters the number of cheers they want to throw at the feet of the streamer.

Numbers like cheer100, cheer1, or anything in between. The more cheers you throw out, the fancier the emoticon produced gets. Bits aren't exactly cheap with 100 costing $1.40 and 25,000 costing about $300. It doesn't appear that the cheers you gift to streamers are redeemable for any monetary value by the person they are given to.

Payments for Bits are handled through the Amazon processing network. For now, Cheering has launched in beta via participating channels of which there are a few handfuls. Eventually Cheering will roll out to all channels. Third parties can build around Cheering using the PubSub system with Rest API support coming. Twitch notes that it is working on adding more local payment methods and currency support in the future. It seems like this cheering system is begging for a way that the money people spend on Bits can at least in part be earned by the streamer they are gifted to.

SOURCE: Twitch