From creation to community: creator updates from VidCon 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.