YouTube Announces a New Feature: Super Chat

In an effort to make it easier for YouTube content creators to share and connect with their audience, YouTube has announced a new tool called Super Chat.

What is YouTube’s Super Chat feature?

According to the website, Super Chat allows for anyone watching a live-stream broadcast the ability to purchase a highlighted message in the chatroom that stand out from the rest of the other chat messages. The goal of this new feature is to make that Super Chat message stand out and capture the live-streamer’s attention. In addition, Super Chat messages remained pinned to the top of the page for up to 5 hours.

Super Chat
(Image Credit: Youtube.com)

YouTube explains that this new feature allows for more meaningful connections between YouTuber’s and their community of followers. The program has already launched for popular YouTubers including iHasCupquake, Great Library (buzzbean11) and Alex Wassabi. In addition, the program will be launched across the YouTube app starting January 31st for content creators in 20 different countries.

Live-Streaming is becoming a big business model. Earlier this week Facebook announced their Journalism Project, which included a set of initiatives that will help stop fake news and benefit journalists. One of the programs included rolling advertisements in between video content published by journalists. Something Mark Zuckerberg’s social media company has yet to offer to their billion users.

In addition, one of YouTube’s competitors, Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, announced a plan to expand their business. At the moment, Twitch is targeted towards video gamers with live-streams of popular video games taking place 24 hours a day. However, Twitch is looking to take over the live-streaming market with a new section called “IRL”. In this section, streamers can share the live real-life experiences in real time with their followers. That means, for example, when a Twitch streamer is on vacation they can easily broadcast their experiences live with the world. In the process, followers can tip, donate, or even pay to subscribe to the Twitch user.

Update (Tuesday, January 17, 2017): Updated the story to reflect that Twitch is a subsidiary of Amazon and not Microsoft.