YouTube is expanding its livestream services with a range of new features that are already considered common amongst other social media platforms. All of the features are built around expanding the live streaming experience for the creator and the user.
What are these features?
Some of these features are familiar, but not to YouTube. There is the concept of live stream guests, which will make it easier to create collaborative content, something vastly popular on YouTube. Creators can share audiences in a more spontaneous manner, allowing smaller creators to get discovered.
There are also new notifiers for when a channel is going live, which looks like a ring around the channel icon, much like Instagram and TikTok’s features. The audience scrolling through their subscribed channels, looking for something to watch, will be able to know who is streaming and tap into it.
And finally, YouTube is working on more full-screen options for live streaming, which would put them on par with Twitch, which has been said to treat their creators less favourably but has better live streaming features. There is also going to be a Q and A feature, which will allow users to posit a question during the live stream.
In a video launching the features, a representative for YouTube said: “Today [March 17th], creators with at least a thousand subscribers can use a feature called live redirect to direct their viewers from a live stream or premier to another livestream or premier on their own channel. But they can’t send their viewers to a livestream or premier hosted on another channel. With this launch, creators with at least a thousand subscribers and no active community guidelines strikes will be able to direct their viewers to a livestream or premier hosted on a different channel.”
Is this a game of catch-up?
YouTube was the first online video content platform, and for a long time has survived with no major competition in the field, but then Twitch and TikTok came along, and meanwhile, Instagram established that video content was their kind of thing too. A lot of the features listed above are taken from inspiration from other platforms.
However, YouTube has an established audience that is different from that of Twitch, TikTok, and Instagram, and these new features will allow marketers to better reach these audiences.
How can affiliate marketers use this?
Live streaming has been known to offer a bigger ROI than short-form video content and offers a lot of chances for creators to connect and expand their audience. Affiliate marketers, in particular, will enjoy the ability for branded content to reach a lot of eyes in the lives streaming format to an audience that isn’t as present on Instagram.
