YouTube continues to roll out more engaging and innovative features to help creators get the most out of live streaming on their platform. Today, YouTube announced a handful of updates that we think you should know about!

To start, let’s talk about ‘Go Live Together,’ a new way to stream with guests. You’ll be able to send a link directly to your guest, which will add them to the stream. Need time to get ready before you go live? You’ll be able to invite guests before the stream and get ready. Pre-roll and midroll ads can be enabled for a Go Live Together, and all the earnings will go to the host of the stream. Analytics will also be viewable for the host and not the guest. This feature is currently being tested on select channels, with hopes to expand eligibility soon.

Going live is an important step, but getting your viewers into the stream is just as important. That’s why YouTube has created Live Rings. Live Rings are a quick and easy way to see if a channel you’ve subscribed to is currently live by adding a ring around their profile picture.

Tapping on a ‘live’ Ring will send viewers directly to your stream. Tapping on a ‘story’ Ring will also pop up your current story. Live Rings should make promoting and gaining new eyes for your stream even easier. This feature is launching now on mobile and soon across all platforms.

Once someone clicks your live stream, keeping them engaged can be challenging. So to help generate deep and engaging content, YouTube is coming out with Live Q&A. Live Q&A allows creators to set a question prompt, and then pin viewer-submitted questions to the top of the chat. Along with these updates to chatting in YouTube live streams, they also are adding new views for mobile fullscreen watching and chatting.

You’ll now be able to view live streams in fullscreen on mobile with the ability to still see and interact in chat. The chat will be able to slide in with a tap of the viewer count icon at the bottom right. This icon will also show key moments when the chat is collapsed, like polls. These two views will be fully launched across YouTube by the last week of March.

Lastly, let’s talk about Cross Channel Live Redirects. For some time now, channels with over 1,000 subscribers have been able to redirect viewers of their live stream to another live stream or premiere hosted on their channel. Now, with this new update, you’ll be able to redirect to your channel and other channels as well. In addition, you’ll be able to manage a list of channels that can be redirected to you or allow all channels you’re subscribed to, to be able to redirect to your content. This should open up lots of opportunities for networking and collaboration within YouTube. This feature will be rolling out to eligible channels soon.

For more questions related to these or anything else YouTube, feel free to contact us.