Date:
September 19, 2024
YouTube launched its much-awaited YouTube Communities yesterday, allowing users to post and engage in conversations about their creators.
YouTube has given birth to a global community of creators who’ve built a humongous following worldwide. However, the fans of these creators have formed strong communities on multiple platforms like Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Discord, and even WhatsApp. While these platforms are great for community building, the source creator of them is often a YouTuber.
As a result, YouTube has made a remarkable step by introducing YouTube Communities yesterday, which eliminates the need to rely on any external platform for conversations around their favorite YouTube creators. Launched at the Made on YouTube event yesterday, the new interface attaches itself directly to the YouTube creator’s main channel.
Unlike the YouTube comments section, the communities will allow people to post text, images, and other stuff in the communities. It is like a mix of Discord’s hyper-private groups with an Instagram timeline interface. There is also a separate section within the communities for creators where they can post content similar to the mainstream social media platforms.
YouTube already has a Community feature where creators can post non-video material. However, it did not gain much traction as its user interface could not compete with the existing socializing platforms, and, as a result, the creators also did not put much interest into populating it.
The new communities may easily overwhelm the creators with notifications, something that the comments, likes and dislikes already do. To help them manage the notifications better, YouTube is adding a Community Hub where creators can manage all the comments, and community posts.
The launch of YouTube Communities is a huge step for the tech giant towards evolving the video streaming platform into a social video platform. If this initiative works, it may become the next big opportunity for content creators to establish a strong and loyal audience channel for themselves alongside direct monetization streams.
