Popular YouTube channels to get live streaming and series playlist features soon

If your YouTube Channel is popular and in good standing, it will soon receive a bunch of new YouTube features, according to a post on the YouTube Partners & Creator blog.

Channels with at least a hundred subscribers will soon be able to live stream. It is expected to be live in the next few weeks and users will have check their Account Features page for an “Enable” button to know if it is. They can enable it if they are interested. To enhance their videos further, users can even add a custom thumbnail to it. This will ensure that their video stands out. While setting a custom thumbnail to their video, one has to ensure that they only upload an image that is representative of the contents of the video.

New features coming...

Another interesting feature that will soon be coming to these popular channels is external annotations. A particularly interesting feature, it can be used to link externally to various online stores and other associated websites. Also, to help users watch more of their videos, channel owners can place them in a series playlist. Once users have marked their playlist as a “series” in the settings, YouTube says it will show viewers the next episode from the series and a link to their entire playlist. The changes are expected to hit these channels in the next few weeks.

Updates to YouTube over the months, major or otherwise, have all been directed towards making the experience better. Take yesterday’s minor tweak, for example. Users already know that YouTube plays content automatically when they open a video – be it an advertisement or a movie trailer. Now in situations where they have multiple videos playing in different tabs, users find it cumbersome to spot the “noisy” tab. Soon, users will be able to spot a tiny "play" Unicode character in the title of their video webpage; this icon appears only when the video is playing. Once they’ve hit the pause button, users will see that the “play” Unicode character disappears from the title. Although minor, this feature will definitely do its bit towards enhancing user experience on YouTube.