YouTube Creator Blog

YouTube Live: faster, easier and more accessible

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Whether it’s solar eclipses, NBA superstars, the hottest music artists, pro gamers, creators donating to charity, or the world’s most famous giraffe, creators use live to connect with fans during the moments that matter. In turn, we are committed to making live content creation easier and more accessible. That’s why we’re excited to share some new improvements launching today.

Real-time interaction
We know how important it is to be able to immediately engage your fans during live streams. Thanks to ultra-low latency, now you can. Enabling ultra low-latency makes it possible to stream video with just a couple seconds of latency, so you’ll be able to answer fan questions and get viewer input during your “Let’s Plays” faster than ever before. It’s easy to set up and doesn’t require any special software or encoders to work.

New tools to make live chat moderation easier
Live chat messages play a key role in creating connections between you and your fans. We want to help you shape the tone of your conversations on YouTube, so we are excited to introduce new chat moderation tools:

Inline moderation lets you quickly moderate your chat feed by simply pressing and holding the “alt/option” button on your keyboard to pause the chat feed. Once the feed is paused, you can hover over messages to remove or approve them with a single click. Don’t forget you can also delegate a moderator for your live chat, giving people you trust the ability to remove, flag or hide messages.

Hold potentially inappropriate messages for review By opting-in, chat messages identified by our system will be held from posting on your streams, then you decide whether to approve, hide, or report them (just like you can with comments). Best part is, as you review more messages the system will get better at identifying the types of messages you want to hold for review. If you want to block certain words or phrases, you can do that too.

Shared hidden user lists lets your moderators use the same hidden users list across comments and live chat. And in the future hides will work in both live chat and comments, regardless of where you take that action.

Stream more easily from iPhone and iPad right to the main YouTube app
Thanks to Apple’s ReplayKit, you can already live stream directly from many popular apps on YouTube Gaming. Now we’re bringing the feature to the main YouTube app so you can live stream your painting from Procreate, your race from Asphalt 8, your MOBA gameplay from Vainglory and more from any app that supports ReplayKit. You’ll also be able to use your phone’s microphone and front-facing camera to add your own video and audio commentary to the stream.

Regardless if you’re streaming your summer vacation shenanigans from your mobile phone or a battle royale of your favorite game from your desktop, we hope these new tools help you do more with YouTube live and deepen the connection with your viewers.

Kurt Wilms, YouTube Live Product Lead
Recently Watched “EXCLUSIVE - BEHIND THE SCENES OF DANANDPHILGAMES”

A new YouTube look that works for you

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog.

When YouTube launched 12 years ago, it was a single website that supported one video format, 320x240 at 4:3 aspect ratio. Fast forward to today, and YouTube lets you watch any combination of SD, HD, 4K, 360, 3-D, and live video on nearly every device with an internet connection – from desktops to phones, tablets to TVs, game consoles, and even VR headsets.

We’ve also introduced apps and services that give you new ways to watch and get even closer to the content and creators you love. Music fans, gamers, and TV lovers each have unique experiences specifically tailored for their favorite content with YouTube Music, YouTube Gaming and YouTube TV. For families looking for the best way to watch together, we launched the YouTube Kids app. And for fans who want an uninterrupted, ad-free experience, and exclusive original content from creators, there’s the YouTube Red membership.

To put it simply, YouTube’s evolved … a lot. And we’re not even close to done. Over the last few months we've started releasing updates and will continue to throughout the rest of the year. When all is said and done, we'll bring a new level of functionality and a more consistent look across our desktop and mobile experiences.

Let’s start with the YouTube mobile app, which is getting a bunch of new features:

Clean new design: We’ve made the header white to let content take the lead and moved the navigation tabs to the bottom of the app so they’re closer to your thumbs. We also added new Library and Account tabs that give you easy access to what you’re looking for.
Videos that move with you: One of the things we’re working on is bringing gestures to YouTube. Earlier this year, we introduced a gesture that allows you to double tap on the left or right side of a video to fast forward or rewind 10 seconds. Give it a try! We already see billions of double taps per day. And I wanted to give you a sneak peek at another gesture I am really excited about. In the coming months, we'll experiment with a feature that lets you jump between videos with a simple swipe of your hand: just swipe left to watch a previous video or swipe right to watch the next one.
Watch at your own pace: Users love that they are able to speed up and slow down the playback of a video on desktop, and we're excited to bring this feature to the mobile app today, so you can enjoy videos at whatever speed you prefer.
Adapt to any video, beautifully: We've also been experimenting with new ways to display all videos in the best possible way. Soon, the YouTube player will seamlessly change shape to match the video format you’re watching, such as vertical, square or horizontal. That means you’ll always get the best viewing experience automatically – including vertical videos with no black bars on the sides!
Browse and discover while you watch: We recently added a feature that lets you view a row of suggested videos while you’re watching in full screen. We're also working on transforming the area below the player so you can browse videos in totally new ways.

Looking beyond the YouTube app, we’ve also been working on a new desktop design. And thanks to all the positive feedback, we're now excited to make it available to all our users around the globe starting today! Our new look applies Material Design to YouTube and delivers a fresh, simple and intuitive user experience that lets content shine – because there's nothing more important than the creators and videos we all love to watch. My favorite feature of this new desktop design is Dark Theme, which turns the background dark while you watch for a more cinematic look.

The bright red cherry on top of this update sundae is a refreshed YouTube Logo and YouTube Icon. Designed for our multi-screen world, the updated Logo combines a cleaned up version of the YouTube wordmark and Icon, creating a more flexible design that works better across a variety of devices, even on the tiniest screens. Why’s it more flexible? When room is limited (say on a smartphone) you can use the brightened up Icon as an abbreviated Logo, which will be seen more easily and read more clearly. You’ll see the new Logo and Icon roll out across mobile and desktop today, and across all our other apps and services soon.

We know this is a lot of change, but we want to make clear that there’s one thing that stays the same: YouTube’s mission. We’re here to give people a voice and show them the world – no matter what device they use.

Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer, recently watched "YouTube: What will you watch next?"

Expanding the ability to appeal more videos

Monday, August 7, 2017

YouTube has always been a place for creators around the world to tell their stories, make connections and earn money. We care about users, creators and advertisers and have, for over a decade, strived to balance and align their interests. In the last few months we spent time addressing concerns from advertisers around where their ads are placed. With new controls and guidelines implemented, many creators have seen their earnings return to normal as advertisers resumed their campaigns. As a part of these recent changes, however, some videos were classified as not suitable for all advertisers, limiting the number of ads served on those videos. There was also no ability to directly appeal in Video Manager. Over the next few weeks, we plan to roll out new icons that will give you a more detailed understanding of how each and every video on your channel (or channels) is monetizing as well as the ability to appeal if you think a video is misclassified. We want our systems to get better and better—and every appeal helps:

Indicates videos that can earn money from the broadest set of advertisers and from YouTube Red. No change from today.
Indicates videos are still eligible to earn money in YouTube Red, but will have limited or no ads because the video has been classified as either not suitable for all advertisers, or has been fully demonetized because we believe it doesn’t meet our advertising guidelines.
Indicates videos that will receive no revenue from ads or YouTube Red. This might be because of a copyright strike, Content ID claim, or Community Guidelines strike.

You can always use our monetization troubleshooter to see what actions you can take on your video. The status of your appeal will now be in blue text below the monetization icon. If your appeal is successful, more ads may be served on your videos.

When this feature is available in your account, you will see a notification in Creator Studio. It’s important to note that the revenue being earned by your video is not changing with this launch. Instead, this update gives you a more detailed understanding of whether your video has been identified as not suitable for all advertisers and provides the chance to appeal in Video Manager. As always, you can also go into YouTube Analytics to see your revenue report for any video.

Remember, if after reviewing the advertiser guidelines, you think your video is suitable for all brands and audiences, you can appeal or get troubleshooting help by following the instructions in our help center. We hope this update helps you better understand how best to create and monetize your content for YouTube's 1.5 billion monthly users.

The YouTube Team

From creation to community: creator updates from VidCon 2017

Saturday, June 24, 2017

With creators flying in from all over the world to meet one another, celebrate what they’ve accomplished, and get in some quality time with their fans, VidCon is one of our favorite events of the year. Aside from being just plain fun, it gives us a chance to show you what we’ve been working on at YouTube. In fact, just today we presented a bunch of new ways we’re hoping to support creators’ growth on the platform and now we want to tell you too.

Sneak peek at YouTube Studio Beta

Many of you use YouTube Creator Studio on desktop to help manage your channel. And while the current site has some useful tools (that won’t be going anywhere), we’ve decided it’s time to rebuild Creator Studio from the ground up. The new experience will be called YouTube Studio (easier, right?). It’s gonna be awesome, and we hope you’ll help us make it even awesome-r by joining our beta.

The overall plan with YouTube Studio is to let you do more in less time. The design will be refined (like… a lot), and we’ll add a number of new features that creators have already been asking for. A smart inbox that houses personalized suggestions for engaging with fans, collaborating with creators, and more is only one of a series of features we’re working on. And we’re going to need your help to make them better!

If you’re interested in being one of the first people to try out the beta, you can sign up here. The fact is, no one knows YouTube better than creators, so we want you to be the ones to tell us what’s working, what’s not quite working, or what you think is missing.

More love for comments

The relationship creators develop with their community is what makes YouTube unique. And since comments are such an important way for you to connect with your fans, we’re working hard to make them better – and your feedback’s already been a huge help.

First up, a few months ago we introduced a new feature called creator hearts. With just one click, you can now heart a favorite comment and show some love to the person who wrote it. You can also pin comments you like to the top of your feed to be sure that all your fans can see them. And we’ve seen that viewers love this kind of personal attention--they open these notifications at a rate that’s 3x higher than regular ones. We’ve also made it easier to manage the tone of the conversations on your channel thanks to a series of tools that let you delegate moderation to trusted members of your community, as well as a beta feature that automatically holds potentially inappropriate comments for your review.

Finally, we’re working on a new approach to comments that can help your fans get even more out of your channel. We call them comment topics, and they give viewers a way to browse comments according to (you guessed it) the topics being discussed. It's a great way to automatically highlight what's unique and interesting about the conversations on your channel. It’s also totally optional, so if you don’t feel like having comment topics, don’t worry, you can disable them or delete individual topics.

And now… making money

Over the last few months we’ve been really happy to hear that creators are using (and liking!) our new monetization tool called Super Chat. Designed to let you interact directly with your fans even more, Super Chat also represents a totally new way to make money on YouTube. Here’s how it works: during live streams, fans can purchase highlighted chat messages that stand out from the crowd. And over 65% of channels that use Super Chat have more than doubled their income during live streams. Super Chat’s already available for creators in 21 countries and today we’re adding 17 new countries to that list!

As you can tell, there’s a lot going on in the world of creator product updates – and a lot of it is thanks to you! We promise to keep working hard, and we hope you’ll keep helping us make YouTube the best place for you to share your voice, see the world, and connect with the communities that matter to you.

Posted by Manuel Bronstein, Vice-President of Product Management

A Message on Pride and LGBTQ Initiatives

Monday, June 19, 2017

June is a very important time for us here at YouTube. Since our earliest years, YouTube has come together to celebrate Pride and honor the contributions that LGBTQ creators and fans have made to our platform. From the It Gets Better campaign, to the thousands of inspiring coming out videos, to the emergence of popular transgender creators, the voices of our LGBTQ community have been key to pushing society in a more understanding and tolerant direction.

While we stand by that proud legacy, we realize that our commitment to give all LGBTQ creators a voice was unfortunately impacted by our Restricted Mode feature. Restricted Mode was originally designed as an optional feature for public institutions like libraries and schools to prevent the viewing of mature content on YouTube. But in looking more closely at the feature, we found that there was LGBTQ (and other) content that should have been included in Restricted Mode but was not, like kissing at weddings, personal accounts of difficult events, and speaking out against discrimination.

Our intention was never to limit this kind of content; having spoken to LGBTQ creators and YouTube employees, I understand just how important it is that teens and students be able to view it. That’s why we’ve updated our policies to explicitly allow these videos in Restricted Mode -- it still won’t work perfectly but over time our systems will get better. We apologize for these issues and want to reaffirm our commitment that YouTube is a place where all voices can be heard.

To offer a little more detail, here's the latest on our progress on Restricted Mode:

Our teams worked with dozens of volunteer LGBTQ employees and select LGBTQ creators to get feedback on our policies and we incorporated that feedback into our processes moving forward.
To date, over 12 million additional videos of all types—including hundreds of thousands featuring LGBTQ content—are now available in Restricted Mode.
We’ve published and broadened Restricted Mode guidelines to ensure that non-graphic, personal accounts of difficult events are available. For example, personal accounts of individuals who suffered discrimination or were impacted by violence for being part of a protected group will now be included in Restricted Mode, provided they don’t contain graphic language or content. Soon we'll have new content in Creator Academy to describe in detail how to make videos that will meet the criteria for Restricted Mode.
To help our systems get better, we invite creators and users to submit instances where they think we got it wrong. We review EVERY video submitted, and in those instances where we make changes to include videos in Restricted Mode, those lessons make our systems better.

On a separate note, earlier this year many creators, including LGBTQ creators, expressed confusion and concern about revenue fluctuations in the wake of advertiser concerns around where their ads are placed on YouTube. These were separate issues that unfortunately happened at the same time. As advertisers paused their spend on YouTube it impacted a broad range of creators. We have rigorous training to ensure that anyone who reviews content that’s been flagged for review ensures all content is treated fairly. For more information, please see our Advertiser-Friendly Content Guidelines in the Help Center.

Looking beyond Restricted Mode, we want to reiterate that YouTube is committed to enabling and promoting LGBTQ voices and resources on our platform.

To celebrate Pride, we’re promoting LGBTQ creators and their content as part of the launch of our fifth annual #ProudToBe campaign. Over the course of the next year, we'll celebrate LGBTQ History Month and International Transgender Day of Visibility. And on June 27, we will also introduce a permanent shelf on our US Spotlight channel to showcase LGBTQ videos throughout the year refreshed on a weekly basis.
Recognizing the specific needs of at-risk LGBTQ youth, we’re also partnering with the leading organization for crisis intervention services for this community, The Trevor Project. We’re investing in Trevor’s channel growth as well as audience development, to expand their reach. We’re also working with 25 global suicide prevention organizations to help surface assistance via phone and text at the time of need.
We're partnering to celebrate LGBTQ history with the NYC LGBT Community Center. Google.org recently announced a $1 million grant to the New York City's LGBT Community Center to support the Stonewall National Monument, the first LGBTQ dedicated landmark in the United States. As a part of this support, we're excited to announce opportunities in the near future for YouTube creators to share LGBTQ history with their audience through the Stonewall initiative.

Most importantly, our recent experience has taught us that we need to do a better job of listening to and communicating with our LGBTQ community.

Over the next few months we will be hosting a series of six Creator Roundtables in YouTube Spaces (in NYC, LA, Toronto, Paris, Berlin, London) focused on discussing initiatives that impact the LGBTQ community and on gathering your feedback to improve our products and programs.
We’ll also host Creator Council Advisory Sessions, both in person and virtual, to get further feedback throughout the year.

At YouTube, we’re proud to stand with the LGBTQ community to support equal rights. Through Pride month and beyond, we will continue to honor the goal of making YouTube a place that celebrates your voices and community. We want YouTube to remain a place where LGBTQ people and their families, friends and supporters can express themselves, empower others and find a place to belong.

Susan Wojcicki, CEO, YouTube

Hot and Cold: Heatmaps in VR

Friday, June 16, 2017

As creators, you're always thinking about new and unique experiences you can share with your audience. From prehistoric perspectives to epic battles, you've blazed a trail with VR to produce hundreds of thousands of videos that can transport viewers to far-off places and thrilling adventures.

When creating content in VR, it’s helpful to know what your viewers are focused on. Today we’re introducing heatmaps for 360-degree and VR videos with over 1,000 views, which will give you specific insight into how your viewers are engaging with your content. With heatmaps, you’ll be able to see exactly what parts of your video are catching a viewer’s attention and how long they’re looking at a specific part of the video.

We want to help you create your next immersive video. So using this tool, we’ve done some early research on what makes an engaging 360-degree video. Here are a few findings:

Focus on what’s in front of you: The defining feature of a 360-degree video is that it allows you to freely look around in any direction, but surprisingly, people spent 75% of their time within the front 90 degrees of a video. So don’t forget to spend significant time on what’s in front of the viewer.
Get their attention: While a lot of time is spent focusing on what’s in front, for many of the most popular VR videos, people viewed more of the full 360-degree space with almost 20% of views actually being behind them. The more engaging the full scene is, the more likely viewers will want to explore the full 360-degree view. Try using markers and animations to draw attention to different parts of the scene.
Keep different experiences in mind: The context in which people are viewing VR videos matters too. Some might be watching on a mobile and portable Cardboard, while others are watching on a desktop computer. For instance, we found viewers usually need a couple seconds to get situated in Cardboard, which isn’t needed for other devices. So make sure to give your viewers a few seconds before jumping into the action.

We’re also excited to announce that for creators who want to go all in on VR and hone their skills, we’re launching our first ever VR intensive program at YouTube Space LA called the VR Creator Lab. Applications are open starting today.

It’s still early days in VR, and as we continue to add new tools to the platform, we’re excited to see all the awesome things you create.

Frank Rodriguez, Product Manager, recently watched Inside ‘Fusterlandia’: Cuba’s Kaleidoscopic Neighborhood from The New York Times

Your Content and Making Money from Advertising on YouTube

Thursday, June 1, 2017

In March we provided an update to changes we’re making to address advertiser concerns around where their advertisements are placed. Since then, we’ve held thousands of productive conversations with advertisers, and implemented additional controls to restore advertiser confidence. As a result, many advertisers have resumed their media campaigns on YouTube, leading creator revenue to return to a better and more stable state. We know that revenue fluctuations have been unsettling and want to reassure you that we’re working closely with our advertising partners to make sure that YouTube continues to be a great place for creators to earn money.

We recognize there is still more work to do. We know we have to improve our communications to you, our creators. We also need to meet our commitment to our advertisers by ensuring their ads only appear against the content they think is suitable for their brands. Here’s an update on some of the things we’re doing to provide greater transparency:

More detail around advertiser-friendly guidelines
One thing you’ve been clear about is your desire for more detail and clarity around our advertiser-friendly guidelines. In response to this feedback, we’ve updated our overall guidelines to provide more detail than before. While it’s not possible for us to cover every video scenario, we hope this additional information will provide you with more insight into the types of content that brands have told us they don’t want to advertise against and help you to make more informed content decisions. We know our systems aren’t perfect and we’re also working to further improve your ability to appeal impacted videos.

New guidelines around content that’s eligible for ads
We’ve heard loud and clear from the creator community and from advertisers that YouTube needs to broaden our advertiser-friendly guidelines around a few additional types of content. We’ve responded by adding new guidelines to take a tougher stance on:

Hateful content: Content that promotes discrimination or disparages or humiliates an individual or group of people on the basis of the individual’s or group’s race, ethnicity, or ethnic origin, nationality, religion, disability, age, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other characteristic associated with systematic discrimination or marginalization.
Inappropriate use of family entertainment characters: Content that depicts family entertainment characters engaged in violent, sexual, vile, or otherwise inappropriate behavior, even if done for comedic or satirical purposes.
Incendiary and demeaning content: Content that is gratuitously incendiary, inflammatory, or demeaning. For example, video content that uses gratuitously disrespectful language that shames or insults an individual or group.

While it remains the case that videos that comply with our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines can remain on the platform, our advertiser-friendly content guidelines focus on what is specifically eligible for advertising. Content that does not comply with AdSense Policies and our ad-friendly guidelines will not be eligible for advertising.

New Creator Academy course
Keep in mind that even if your video is approved for ads, what’s right for one brand may not be right for another. A home cleaning brand and a beer brand will likely choose to target very different audiences. Today, we’re launching a new course in our Creator Academy to provide additional detail around making your content appealing for a broad range of advertisers, if that is your goal.

We hope these new policies and guidelines provide additional information you can use to make the right decisions for your content. Every day we’re inspired by the stories you tell to audiences around the world. Thank you for being patient with us as we work to improve the ecosystem for creators, advertisers and users.

Ariel Bardin, VP, Product Management, recently watched “Tom’s Take: Ads Update” from Creator Insider

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