Pulse Is Twitch's Own Brand Of Twitter

It seems that Twitch is really out to expand its territory, or at least keep everything withing the confines f its kingdom. After the revelation that Twitch will be going after Steam by selling games itself, it is now taking on Twitter and Facebook with a social feed of its own. Called Pulse, the feature aggregates posts from all the Twitch broadcasters you follow into one single place, inside Twitch, of course, so you won't have to wait for their next juicy update on Twitter or Facebook.

No one will blame you if you get confused by Pulse and an existing feature called Channel Feed. Twitch has anticipated that and even has an FAQ for it. To compare it with existing social networks, Channel Feed is like a broadcaster's specific page, containing only what that broadcaster has posted and nothing else.

Pulse, on the other hand, is an "always-on" collection of posts from anyone and everyone you're linked to on Twitch, sort of like your Timeline. That includes not only posts from broadcasters you follow but also from your Twitch friends. Anything posted on a Channel Feed will automatically also appear in your Pulse feed.

A Pulse post can contain a wide variety of content, from videos to images to text updates. It can also have polls and, of course, animated GIFs. For the sake of fairness, Pulse also supports video links from Vimeo and YouTube.

Twitch positions Pulse as a way for streamers and their followers to become more engaged. And by that, it means not having to take those social interactions outside of Twitch. Granted, it is indeed more convenient to have just one place to post and read updates, but streamers might already be set in their own social network circles and will have very little incentive to put all their eggs in one single Twitch basket.

SOURCE: Twitch