YouTube Launches Its Own Social Network Called “YouTube Community”
September 20, 2016
With YouTube being the world’s second largest search engine, and third most visited site after Google and Facebook, it was only a matter of time before YouTube followed in the footsteps of Google and created their own social network.
Just last week YouTube confirmed that they had been working on their own social network, which was later confirmed by the Google-owned company as YouTube Community.
YouTube had the following to say about their new social network;
“Today, we’re introducing a beta version of a new product to help strengthen the bond between you and your viewers, called YouTube Community.
The brand new Community tab on your YouTube channel gives you a new, simple way to engage with your viewers and express yourself beyond video. Now you can do things like text, live videos, images, animated GIFs and more, giving you easier, lightweight ways to engage with your fans more often in between uploads, in real time. Viewers will be able to see your posts in the Subscriptions feed on their phones. They can also opt into getting a notification anytime you post.”
This new feature has been kept top secret, and has been beta-tested by a number of YouTube content creators and after a successful test behind the scenes, YouTube Community have taken one step further and will be introducing this to the public for beta testing in the coming months.
WHAT’S NEW WITH YOUTUBE COMMUNITY?
The social network will allow video creators on YouTube to better engage with their views using GIF’s, text, images and more. This, in turn will help the creators to connect on a more personal level with their audience.
This will be shown as a tab on their channel called “Community”. Viewers will also be able to see their favourite content creators posts in their “subscription” feed on the mobile application. This can be changed should a user not want to receive a notification from a creator they follow on YouTube.
WILL IT RIVAL TWITTER, FACEBOOK OR INSTAGRAM?
In short; no. The idea behind YouTube Community at this stage is not to rival the big social networks but to offer creators inside of YouTube the opportunity to engage on a more personal level with their audience, inside the platform they upload videos to on a regular basis.
YouTube have been having a tough time recently after receiving backlash from a number of their biggest creators for the demonetisation of video’s because of the use of swear words, or political/war related content being used in videos. This will now be overshadowed by the launch of YouTube Community.
What do you think about YouTube’s mini social network; YouTube Community?
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