YouTube just added a new feature to its mobile app that lets content creators reach out to fans more personally. The online video company announced that it has opened up mobile live-streaming for creators with over 10,000 subscribers. In addition to live-streaming from smartphones, creators and viewers now have access to a feature called "Super Chat," which lets viewers pin a comment to the top of the live chat window for everyone, including the creator, to see for a longer period of time.
YouTube has supported live-streaming to its website from a PC for a few years, but the feature that was announced last year at VidCon has only been available to a few select creators until now. According to a Google blog post, this rollout will put the feature into the hands of "hundreds of thousands of creators." But there's still a significant barrier to entry for YouTubers who have yet to break through that 10,000-sub ceiling. YouTube does plan on eventually rolling out the feature to every user in the future.
Super Chat adds an interesting monetary value to YouTube live-streams. The paid feature is available on both PC and mobile YouTube live-streams, and it lets viewers pay to highlight their comment and pin it at the top of the chat window for up to five hours. In addition to letting viewers "get a creator's attention" more easily, Google's blog post states that "Super Chat gives viewers a chance to add a little visual flair to their chats and gives creators a new way to keep connected to their fans while earning a little money on the side."
According to a Variety report, viewers can pay as little as $1 to get their comment highlighted. But to get that comment bumped to the top of the chat as well, they'll need to dish out as much as $10. It seems the cost of a Super Chat comment ranges depending on the length of the comment, the highlight color, and the length of time the comment stays pinned. Viewers could drop up to $500 on a Super Chat message.
While YouTube takes 55 percent of ad revenue from creators, it has not shared how much Super Chat revenue it will take. The Super Chat support page says creators will "receive Super Chat revenue in the same way that you receive ads revenue with AdSense." Other social media sites have systems similar to Super Chat. For example, Twitch lets users pay to use special "emotes," or emojis, in the chat to "cheer" creators during a live-stream session. Those special emojis cost anywhere from $1 to over $100.
Super Chat will undoubtably provide another small source of income for YouTubers to supplement AdSense revenue. Mobile live-streaming is a strategic move on YouTube's part. Nearly every major social media site allows some form of live-streaming, with outlets like Facebook relying almost solely on live-streams from mobile apps rather than live video recorded on a computer. But while YouTube needs to keep up with its biggest competitors in terms of mobile features, it also likely wants to keep its top creators off of competing sites and apps. Many of the top YouTubers have huge social media followings across all platforms, including Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. Giving creators the ability to live-stream to YouTube from anywhere could encourage them to live-stream less on other social media apps.
With the speculation that YouTube's algorithm is now favoring channels and videos that encourage viewers to spend more time on the site (favoring longer videos as opposed to minute-long clips), live-streaming is just another way YouTube is encouraging its creators to make more—and more lengthy—content for its site.
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