YouTube recently held its Made On YouTube event where the company announced a dedicated space for creators to interact with their fans and viewers. The space will be called ‘Communities’ which will be Discord like a server built into a creator’s channel. The feature is aimed to help creators avoid other platforms such as Discord and Reddit to interact with viewers. This new space will allow viewers to post and interact with other fans within a creator’s channel. Earlier, viewers were just limited to leaving comments on the creator's channel.
Communities now allow users to share their own content within a creator’s Community to engage with other fans who share similar interests. For example, a fitness creator’s Community could feature posts from fans who are sharing videos and photos from their latest hike. Initially, this feature is only accessible to subscribers.
The company envisions Communities as a dedicated space for conversation and connection, while still enabling creators to retain control over their content. YouTube states that conversations within Communities are designed to unfold over time, similar to any other forum-style setting.
It's important to note that the new Communities feature is distinct from YouTube’s existing Community feature, which provides creators with a space to share text and images with viewers but does not facilitate viewer interaction. The Community feature was launched in 2016 and does not support viewer-to-viewer interaction.
Currently, YouTube is testing Communities on mobile devices with a small group of creators. The company plans to expand the feature to more creators later this year and aims to provide access to additional channels in early 2025.
“Communities is a place where you can choose to create that with your fans. This is a place where you and your fans can come together to build even deeper connections over the topics and videos you love, not just posting updates between uploaders or asking for opinions or ideas, but for the first time, subscribers will spark their own discussions with you and with each other,” Bangaly Kaba, director of Product Management at YouTube, during the event.
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