YouTube mobile livestreaming coming to your phone ‘soon’

Following in Facebook and Twitter’s stead, Google’s video behemoth YouTube has announced that it has begun rolling out mobile livestreaming to select creators.

It’s a big move for the company, which hasn’t really focused on the mobile broadcasting space, a space in which it’s constantly losing ground to the likes of Facebook Live and Twitter’s Periscope.

The company notes that YouTube mobile livestreaming will be built into the mobile app itself, negating the need to install two different apps. An in-app capture button will be used to kick off the livestreaming process.

YouTube notes that these livestreamed clips will also have the “same features as regular YouTube videos”, which means they can be indexed by YouTube’s search, added to playlists or protected from redistribution.

YouTube has allowed channels to livestream since 2011, but mobile livestreaming is new ground for the company

To round off the livestreaming update, the video giant is also adding a paid-commenting system dubbed Super Chat.

“Super Chat is like paying for that front-row seat in the digital age: 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 colours and stay pinned to the top of the chat window for up to five hours,” the company notes.

YouTube explains that Super Chat will allow broadcasters to earn revenue on their live-clips, further incentivising use of its livestreaming system as opposed to Twitter’s or Facebook’s. The tool will initially launch with support for YouTubers in 20 countries, and viewers in 40.

And nope, South Africa isn’t on the initial offerings list, but Senegal and Uganda do feature.

Broadcasters can also pin these chats to their videos, giving users an incentive to pay for chat bubbles.

The update is already live for accounts with “more than 10 000 subscribers”, with Google explaining that the update will be rolling out to other users “soon”.