YouTube Community goes beyond video

Your bond with your viewers is deep. You've grown up together, laughed together, and done incredible things together, from shifting attitudes about gay rights to volunteering millions of dollars toward important charitable causes. Today, we’re introducing a beta version of a new product to help strengthen the bond between you and your viewers, called YouTube Community.

The brand new Community tab on your YouTube channel gives you a new, simple way to engage with your viewers and express yourself beyond video. Now you can do things like text, live videos, images, animated GIFs and more, giving you easier, lightweight ways to engage with your fans more often in between uploads, in real time. Viewers will be able to see your posts in the Subscriptions feed on their phones. They can also opt into getting a notification anytime you post.

Community is a special release for us because it represents the deepest product collaboration we've ever done with creators like you. We started by inviting creators in early to develop, in partnership with us, the tools they wanted to better engage with their fans. 

These creators brought forward a diversity of backgrounds and content styles, from John & Hank Green, to AsapSCIENCE, The Game Theorists, Karmin, The Key of Awesome, The Kloons, Lilly Singh, Peter Hollens, Rosianna Halse Rojas, Sam Tsui, Threadbanger, and VSauce3. We are launching the Community beta today with these creators, but we look forward to bringing more of you onboard. This is a first step and, with creator and fan feedback, we look forward to rolling out new features and functions as well as including more creators in the months ahead. 

As creators, your ideas and feedback shape our platform, inspire new features, and help us decide what to prioritize. It's you who ultimately build YouTube and as the new Community product shows, together, we make YouTube better for everyone.