YouTube Unveils Community Post Sharing, Live-Stream Donations

YouTube is introducing additional sharing options for Community Posts and new interactive gifts designed to encourage donations during live streams.

Alongside this event, YouTube has announced new updates to Community Post sharing and live-stream donations as part of its Creator on the Rise series, all of which are aimed at deepening the creator-audience relationship.

Expanded Sharing for Community Posts

Even for channel-specific Communities, which YouTube has opened more broadly since June, providing creators with an opportunity-coupled area resembling a social media-style environment to interact with their fans.

This will allow creators to share their text-based Community updates in more places, including a direct link to each post.

The additional social sharing feature here could extend the reach of Community content and perhaps generate more engagement from those viewing it.

Interactive Gifts in Live Streams

YouTube Jewels gifting system was first announced by YouTube back in July of last year, and essentially allows viewers to buy Jewels in-app and swap them for digital stickers.

This offers a more engaging way to support your favorite creators, with new options to make your donations more unique and noticeable

As per YouTube:

“We’re excited to introduce gift effects, which offer five new interactive options: ‘Cat ears,’ ‘Good job,’ ‘Flower crown,’ ‘Celebrate,’ and ‘Royal crown.’ These character and environment-based effects will display on screen for 8 to 15 seconds when viewers redeem jewels through the gift picker.”

Similar to the gifting capabilities of TikTok, these interactives enable creators to capture donor attention and increase their earnings. The new effects, labeled with a purple sparkle icon in the gift picker, are being rolled out to U.S. channels that meet the eligibility criteria this week.

Experimenting with Gift Goals

For you, YouTube is introducing gift goals, a feature that allows creators to set donation goals during live streams and reward users once these goals are reached.

As shown in these example screens, gift goals let live creators set specific donation targets during a stream, which they can then acknowledge with a chosen ‘reward’.

As YouTube explains:

“Gift goals can help you build community by encouraging your viewers to work towards a common mission. Once you reach your goal, you can celebrate with your fans who helped make it happen.”

Creaters enable gift goals by tapping the bullseye icon when going live, where they can then enter a target gift value and time period. Then viewers can donate toward the goal and celebrate with her once she hits it. Creators can set follow-up goals after the initial one, but only one active goal can run at a time.

“Once launched, viewers can participate by tapping the bullseye icon, reading the details, and contributing to the goal. Once you’ve reached your current goal, you can set up another one, but you can’t have two goals running at the same time.”

This is currently in testing with U.S. creators on vertical mobile live streams.

Personal Take

These updates are another indication of YouTube’s unwavering focus on creating a space for social interaction and monetization opportunities for creators. This allows them to cut through the noise and be exposed to a broader audience beyond the platform, with more people discovering their content for the first time organically.

The new interactive gifting and donation goals enable viewers to spectate and rally around events and creators they enjoy during live streams, both of which are critical components for sustainable creator ecosystems.