YouTube is set to take on Facebook Live by expanding its mobile livestreaming platform, but the Internet video giant is not quite ready to let just anyone stream on its service.
Today, the Google Inc. video unit announced that it’s opening up mobile livestreaming to all content creators, with one catch: They must have more than 10,000 subscribers on their channel. The site debuted its mobile streaming platform back in June, calling it ” an entirely new, more intimate and spontaneous way to share your experiences with your communities.” Initially, the feature was available to a small number of power users, but it is now open to users with more modest subscriber numbers.
The livestreaming feature is baked directly into YouTube’s mobile app, and live videos are treated exactly the same as regular videos. Uses can search for them, discover them through playlists or recommendations and so on.
In its announcement, YouTube said that mobile streaming will help content creators to better engage with their fans, and it also opens up another source of revenue through a new feature called Super Chat. Much like the chat donation messages popular on Amazon’s Twitch, Super Chat gives users the ability to pay money to send a high-profile message to the streamer. These messages will be highlighted in the stream chat, ensuring that they will be noticed while at the same time giving the streamer a little extra cash.
“Super Chat is like paying for that front-row seat in the digital age,” Barbara Macdonald and Kurt Wilms, product managers at YouTube, explained in a blog post. “It lets any fan watching a live stream stand out from the crowd and get a creator’s attention by purchasing chat messages that are highlighted in bright colors and stay pinned to the top of the chat window for up to five hours.”
Only moderately successful YouTuber’s can take advantage of mobile streaming for now, but YouTube said that the feature will become available for everyone else “soon.” Services such as Facebook Live and Periscope already allow normal users to stream from mobile, so it is unclear why YouTube is still keeping its platform limited.
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