Why just Chat when you can Super Chat?
YouTube Thursday announced the launch of Super Chat, a way for users to purchase highlighted mentions during livestreams in the hopes of attracting the attention of the Creators of those livestreams.
Product manager Barbara Macdonald said in a blog post that Super Chats remain pinned to the top of chats on livestreams for up to five hours, adding:
For Creators, this means Super Chat does double duty: keeping their conversations and connections with (super) fans meaningful and lively, while also giving Creators a new way to make money. We’re excited to start the Super Chat beta today with a few creators, such as iHasCupquake, Great Library (buzzbean11) and Alex Wassabi. And we plan to broadly launch Super Chat Jan. 31 for creators in 20 countries and viewers in more than 40 countries.
Here’s how it works, via the feature’s support page:
Super Chats stand out from other messages in two ways:
- Your Super Chat is highlighted with a color.
- Your Super Chat stays pinned in the ticker for a set period of time.
The color of your Super Chat, the period of time it stays pinned in the ticker and the maximum message length are determined by the amount of your purchase.
To make a purchase:
- Select the dollar sign within a live chat. The live chat must be visible and mobile devices must be in portrait mode.
- Select “Send a Super Chat.”
- To select an amount, either drag the slider or type your desired value.
- Optionally, enter your message.
- Select “Buy and Send.”
- To finish your purchase, follow the instructions.
When the transaction is complete, your public Super Chat will be sent to all viewers in the live chat. A receipt will be emailed to you as a record of the purchase.
Macdonald also revealed that YouTube is discontinuing its Fan Funding feature:
As we welcome a new tool for fans and creators, we bid farewell to an old one: Fan Funding. We launched Fan Funding in 2014 to let viewers make voluntary payments to support creators directly. While we were really excited about Fan Funding, it never achieved widespread usage outside of livestreams, where we saw the majority of revenue. Fan Funding will stop accepting new sign-ups today, but it can continue to be used on enabled channels until Feb. 28, when it will be discontinued.
Readers: What are your initial thoughts on YouTube Super Chat?
This post first appeared on SocialTimes | Covering The World Of Social Media, please read the originial post: here
