You might have seen us share a couple of articles recently, one covering the Epic layoffs and one about Stories coming to Twitch mobile app. They may differ in scale, but at their core they’re both about platform evolution.

Epic made big acquisitions (not Activision-Blizzard big, but still) in order to expand their platform. Unfortunately - with the admission that they’ve been “spending way more money than we earn” - this led to the mass layoffs at the music platform Bandcamp, and Epic selling off digital marketing brand SuperAwesome.

Twitch on the other hand tried something smaller and far more on-brand, following Instagram, TikTok, and others by adding its version of the popular Stories, which help creators and their audience engage much more effectively.

This raises a handy question for our new weekly discussion slot, Thursday Thoughts, namely: is the consolidation of platform features inevitable? Will all the major platforms keep borrowing popular features from one another, or is there a limit on how far it’ll work? What’s the best way to do it - go fast and break things like Epic, or cautiously like Twitch at the risk of being late to the party?

Let us know what you think!