Twitch shoutout commands — !so vs !vso vs /shoutout

The three things called "shoutout"

When a viewer says "hey can you so them?", they could mean any of three different commands. They're not interchangeable.

1. /shoutout — Twitch's built-in

A first-party Twitch feature. Typed by you or a moderator into chat as /shoutout @streamer. Twitch surfaces a native shoutout card to your viewers in the chat sidebar and counts toward the target's discoverability metrics. Costs nothing, no setup, no overlay. The visible effect is small — a chat card, not a scene element.

2. !so — chat-only shoutout from a bot

The classic Nightbot / StreamElements / Streamlabs custom command that posts a templated chat message: "Check out @streamer at twitch.tv/streamer, last seen playing X." Pure text. No video, no audio, no scene change. Useful for raid-out moments and casual mentions.

3. !vso — video shout-out overlay

The toolset's version. A moderator types !vso @streamer and an overlay pops onto your scene playing one of that streamer's real clips — full audio, smooth animation, then it slides out. Functionally closer to a mid-stream commercial for the streamer you're shouting out than a chat message.

When to use which

• Raid-out — fire all three. /shoutout for the Twitch metric, !so for the chat link, and!vso on the BRB / ending scene so your viewers actually see what they're raiding into.
• Mid-stream collab mention — !vso is the headline; the clip auto-plays and ducks your mic / Spotify for ~30 seconds.
• "Hey check out my friend" drive-by — !so by itself is fine. Don't hijack your scene for a 30-second clip if you're just plugging a name.
• First-time chatter recognition — /shoutout only. It's the cheapest signal-cost option.

What !vso actually does

Pulls the target streamer's top clips via the Twitch Helix API, picks one (with opt-out rules respected — see below), plays it as an overlay with crossfaded audio and a label strip showing the streamer's name + a tiny "follow" nudge. When the clip ends, the overlay slides off and your normal scene audio comes back.

Audio is normalized per-clip using EBU R128 LUFS so the loud clips and the quiet clips end up the same volume. See the engineering note for how that works in-browser.

Opt-out and safety

The video shout-out is on-stream, full-audio content. Some streamers don't want their clips replayed without warning. The overlay supports:

• !vso opt-out — when typed by the target streamer themselves, marks their channel as "don't auto-play clips of me." Persists forever.
• Per-channel blacklist on the tool page for clips/streamers you never want surfaced.
• Profanity / nuked-clip filtering on the clip selection step.

Setup

1. From the dashboard, open Video shout-out.
2. Create a source, copy the URL, add it to OBS as a 1920×1080 browser source. Browser source walkthrough if you're new.
3. Set who can fire !vso on the tool page — broadcaster + mods is the default. VIPs / subs are optional.
4. That's it. !vso @streamer in chat to test.

Pair with

Event list so the raid that you're shouting back at actually appears on stream, and the BRB scene for the moment after your raid-out card when you want one last highlight reel before you hit Stop Stream.