YouTube makes subscriber-only chats and polls available to all streamers

YouTube has boosted its features for gamers and live-streamers with three more features borrowed from Twitch, The Verge has reported. Going forward, all streamers will be able to limit chats to subscribers only, and create polls inside of chats. On top of that, streamers with 1,000 subscribers or more will be able to allow viewers to share clips.

Subscriber-only chat has been available to popular streamers since May, but has now come to all users. It can be useful for streamers (particularly smaller ones) as a way to moderate and control a chat, while providing some motivation for viewers to pay. And as with other platforms, polls provide a way to engage with and get input from users.

YouTube adds subscriber-only chat and other features borrowed from Twitch (Google)

Meanwhile, clips are a useful tool for discovery, allowing viewers to catch the gist of a streamer's content before tuning in. At the same time, it allows fans to share highlights to attract potential new viewers. While it's currently limited to streamers with 1,000+ followers, YouTube said it will eventually roll out to all streamers.

All of these features have been available for some time on Twitch, which has even experimented with subscriber-only streams. While that platform still dominates livestreaming with two thirds of all viewers, YouTube owned about a quarter of the market by the end of 2020, as The Verge noted.