Twitch announced a new feature today that is not only available for everyone today but pretty useful as well: an Event Manager. It seems like Twitch is really trying to get everything stream-related all in-house and as directly linked to your channel as possible with a desktop app to keep in touch with your community, a feed to post about updates on your channel, and now an event list. The Event Manager can be really handy to help promote charity events, marathons, special events you’re taking part in, and more. I’d say you can even use the Event Manager to post when you’ll be streaming if you have a fluctuating schedule.

The events you can create have what I’d describe as the bare minimum for scheduling in this case. You can set a title which gets pulled when you share the post, start and end times, and an optional image and description that get’s used mostly on Twitch. For the regular streaming schedule I described earlier, this process might be a bit high maintenance but certainly for more infrequent special events you might run on your channel, this system will certainly help visualize things that you might be planning. From the event listings, you can share the event across social media easily to an event post and your viewers can set a reminder via a Twitch notification or one of several common calendar applications like Google Calendar.

For the most part, a feature like this is good for everyone. It has the basic kind of things that anyone could use for special events but to that point, I do wish there were just a few more features. In a situation where you might be collaborating with other streamers, whether you’re playing a game or doing a podcast together, you can’t include your collaborators yet. It specifically looks like that’s planned since it seems like there’s easily space for others that will be on the stream but I can’t add them yet. I also find the Channel Feed version of the post to be lacking. This could be what happens with a feature is out for literally just a few hours but I’d feel better about the Channel Feed post if it pulled the image I used or had more options directly from the Channel Feed. Speaking of Channel Feed, though, I’d like to see more direct crossover with these two features like a sticky post of some sore at the top of the Channel Feed with the next event or even a condensed version of the weeks events with the time displayed for streamers that do need to post their weekly schedule for whatever reason.

I’m hesitantly optimistic about the Event Manager. This seems more immediately usable than the Channel Feed and it compliments the actual stream very well. My hope is that Twitch continues to develop it and add things that make the event listing more useful for both the broadcaster and the viewer.

For more info, check out the Twitch Blog.