In order to provide users with way of preventing their chat messages from getting buried in YouTube's comment section, the video-sharing platform has announced a new tool named 'Super Chat'. The newly-announced feature essentially pins user's message at the top of the chat for up to five hours so that the message gets the required attention from the video creator. The Super chats are also highlighted using a different colour.
YouTube has already started the beta test for the Super Chat feature with few creators including-iHasCupquake, Great Library (buzzbean11), and Alex Wassabi, the company said in its blog post. However, it plans to broadly launch the feature on January 31, with creators from 20 countries and viewers in more than 40 countries, it added.
"For creators, this means Super Chat does double duty: keeping their conversations and connections with (super) fans meaningful and lively while also giving creators a new way to make money," the blog post said.
In terms of requirements and availability, the Super Chats can be viewed on YouTube or YouTube Gaming on computer, in Android app, and in the iOS app. Interestingly, Super Chat purchases can be made on all aforementioned platforms except iOS. YouTube says that purchases on iOS are currently not supported.
In order to make a Super Chat purchase, users need to select the "$" sign within the live chat. The option apparently pops up only in portrait mode. Then, you have to select the Send a Super Chat option. The user is then required to either type or drag the slider to their desired value. Users can then type the message and then select the option to Buy and Send.
"They can be viewed in Internet Explorer 11+, Chrome 36+, Safari 9+, FireFox 35+, Edge, and Opera 23+," the company said on browsers supporting the new Super Chat feature.
Apart from the introduction of this new feature, the Google-owned website also announced that it is getting rid of its Fan Funding feature, which was launched back in 2014. The Fan Funding feature essentially allowed users to make voluntary payments to support their favourite content creators. "While we were really excited about Fan Funding, it never achieved widespread usage outside of live streams, where we saw the majority of revenue," YouTube reasoned in the blog post.
Even though the company has stopped accepting new signups for the Fan Funding feature, the feature will continue to be used on enabled channels till February 28, when it will finally be discontinued.
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