Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
YouTube is expanding the ways creators can monetize their content, interact with viewers, and generate new ideas for their channels. The new features are being teased today in a lengthy blog post by YouTube’s chief product officer, Neal Mohan, and will roll out throughout the year.
Firstly, YouTube Shorts is getting a trove of new features and tools this year. On the creator side, YouTube says it plans to roll out new video effects, editing capabilities, and the ability to reply to comments by creating a Short — much like creators do on TikTok.
Plus, YouTube plans to introduce new ways for creators to monetize Shorts, including by expanding avenues for branded content, bringing Super Chat to Shorts, and eventually, enabling the ability to shop from a Short.
Shopping is going to be widely expanded on across the app more generally, the company says. Beyond shoppable videos and Live Shopping, it’s also exploring other ways to incorporate shopping into the YouTube experience.
YouTube is also introducing a handful of other features this year that will help creators generate new content. New insights will be added to YouTube Studio that the company says will help creators understand how viewers are interacting with their contact and help spark ideas for new videos.
Additionally, YouTube this year will roll out the ability for creators to go live together, once again boosting interactivity and working around the problem of coming up short for things to talk about with viewers.
On the user side, YouTube also plans to more widely introduce a popular Twitch feature: gifted memberships. YouTube has already started testing the previously announced feature, but Mohan writes that YouTube expects to expand the capability in the coming months.
In addition, YouTube will soon roll out an integration that’ll allow you to interact on your phone with the video you’re watching on TV. This will work when you’re logged into the same account on both devices and will allow viewers to read or write a comment and share videos from their mobile device, among other things.
Lastly, YouTube TV is getting a redesign this year that Mohan writes will “improve the look and feel, and let you organize your favorites more easily.” It’s a big year of change for YouTube — don’t miss our discussion with Mohan about all these and other changes coming to YouTube and YouTube TV on a new episode of Vergecast today.