YouTube is rolling out 3 new updates to their Live Stream feature. These are designed to make the Live Stream experience more interactive.
YouTube is adding polls, subscriber-only chats and an expansion of the clips feature to their Live Streams.
Live Polls will be available on stream and premieres. They can be used to ask the audience their opinion on your current topic of discussion. You can create a live poll by tapping “create a poll” at the bottom of the chat window. Then selecting “ask your community”. Polls can have 2-4 options and can only be seen during the live stream. They won’t show during live chat replays. These can only be created from a computer, not a mobile device.
Next is the subscriber-only chat. This can be used to help moderate the chat more easily and create better connections with viewers. This can be enabled when you set up your live stream or while broadcasting. From your live stream, click edit and live chat. Then under “who can send a message” select subscribers. You can also choose how long people need to have been subscribed to send messages. When this feature is turned on, users will be able to see that it’s subscribers-only and how long they need to be subscribed for.
Lastly, there’s the expansion of the Clips feature. This is a feature which has been in testing with a small number of creators. It allows viewers to choose a segment of 5-60 seconds which they can share with others on YouTube or third-party platforms. When this feature is enabled, viewers can clip a portion of the video to share. All metrics will be attributed back to the original video.