YouTube launches its own social media network called YouTube Community

YouTube claims to have a user base of over a billion people across the world. Since its inception in 2005, YouTube has been a great platform for performers and fans to feel closer than they are. It is a lot more personal experience, as compared to a television, for example. Especially for video bloggers, also called vloggers, YouTube is like the golden egg-laying hen, and with the option to create live videos and being able to stream in real-time, fans getting notified the moment content from their favorite vloggers is up, has brought them closer than ever before. In an effort to bring its users, both viewers and content creators closer, YouTube has announced a new social networking service called the YouTube community.

With the integration of the new social networking feature in the app, YouTube users will now see ‘Community’ tab on all YouTube channels. The Community tab on a content creator’s YouTube channel would give them a new and a simple way to engage with their viewers and communicate with them beyond video. The vloggers will be able to share media like text, live videos, images, animated GIFs, on their timeline, so that they are able to connect with their audience even when not creating a video. Essentially, this works like News Feed on Facebook, whatever a blogger feeds in on their community page, viewers will be able to see the posts in the Subscriptions feed on their phones. They can also opt into getting a notification anytime something is posted on the timeline of the people they have subscribed to.

However, if you look at it as a ‘social media platform’ per se, it’s quite basic. Like mentioned before, it is essentially just a News Feed or a timeline of a content creator, where viewers can get constant updates as to what those people are doing and updating. However, the idea of the timeline does give YouTube a little edge to stand against other social media networks. YouTube has its own audience, and it is a big solid number, by adding the YouTube community, it would probably be able to engage viewers on the website for longer. YouTube Community is currently in beta, and is being tested by a number of well-known vloggers including John & Hank Green, AsapSCIENCE, The Game Theorists, Karmin, The Key of Awesome, Threadbanger, and Vsauce3. 

Recently, YouTube also enabled live streaming on the website using mobile. To go live, users have to just hit the “big red capture button” present at the corner and select a photo as a thumbnail, and start the broadcast in real time. The app then gives the option to add chat while live streaming and notify subscribers when they go live. Since the live streaming is incorporated in the YouTube app itself, it will have all the features that a regular video has like search option, recommendations and playlists and safety from unauthorized users.

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