It is a known fact that over the past few years, YouTube has been helping creators to share their stories and messages effectively, and strengthen their relationships with their fans. On January 12 (last week), YouTube has announced a new feature that will help creators and fans to connect with each other during live streams. Named “Super Chat”, this tool is the latest offering from YouTube and one of the remarkable features that helps creators monetize their videos or live streams.
If you are watching a live stream, you can easily purchase a Super Chat. Your Super Chat will be displayed as a highlighted message that stands out from the plenty of messages. This way of presenting your message will help you gain more traction and attention from your favorite creator. Super Chats remain pinned to the chat window for up to 5 hours, thus you will get more airtime for your message.
This helps creators to make their conversations with their fans more lively and meaningful. It also helps creators generate more revenue. YouTube is launching Super Chat beta for a some of the prominent creators including iHasCupquake, Great Library (buzzbean11) and Alex Wassabi.
The Fan Funding tool, which was launched in 2014, is bidding goodbye with the arrival of Super Chat. Fan Funding supported viewers to make voluntary payments to creators directly. However, Fan Funding failed to achieve a strong user base outside live streams. From now, users cannot sign up for Fan Funding, and it will be permanently discontinued from February 28. The Fan Funding API will soon be replaced by a new API, which enables developers to access real-time purchase data from the system.
YouTube is planning for a wide launch of Super Chat on January 31. Initially, creators in 20 countries will benefit from Super Chat and it will have viewers in more than 40 countries. Super Chat is one of the revolutionary steps taken by YouTube to better the user experience for both creators and viewers.