YouTube Is Adding Live Redirects And Gifted Memberships To Its Livestreams, For The Benefit Of Both Viewers And Creators

YouTube has announced its intentions of introducing Gifted Memberships and Live Redirects as new streaming features to the platform.

YouTube's taken yet another leaf out of Twitch's streaming handbook with these new steps, but honestly, how could it not? The platform may not be as definitive a site for live streaming as Twitch is, considering the former was built for pre-recorded uploads while the latter started out as a livestreaming site, but livestreaming on YouTube has come very far. It's now a rather common form of content creation on the platform, and much like Twitch, has also managed to extend beyond the barriers of just gaming channels. Developers, musicians, artists, and all other such communities have managed to find their niches within livestream content and are now actively working towards establishing a new type of audience.

Live Redirect is a feature that's more geared towards the benefit of users, however, technically everyone wins here. The feature acts much like YouTube's auto-play button does, in that once a livestream ends, users are immediately redirected towards another relevant one. It's a system that further encourages users to keep watching content on the platform, and shows just how much of an audience livestreaming has managed to amass on YouTube. The site that used to just feature short clips and highlights from Twitch streams is now actively making those streams itself, and heavily profiting from the process.
Gifted Memberships seem very similar to how Memberships already work on the platform. It just adds another tier to the already existing tier system of memberships, via which users on the platform can support creators. With instalments acting as an online subscription package, viewers get certain benefits such as special badges and live emoticons as they continue to support their favorite content creators. Gifted Memberships will simply be either a collective version of all the previous tiers, or will perhaps add more in the form of a another tier.

Livestreaming is a very lucrative source of both money and content, this cannot be denied. YouTube's gotten a taste for the format as well, and is only going to be investing more and more into content creators, audiences, and what can be done with them.

Image Credits: Olly Curtis/Future / Getty Images

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