YouTube has always been a sleeping giant when it comes to providing a mainstream livestream service. They have been providing the service for a while now which had exceptions like your channel had to have no livestream restrictions (like copyright issues or strikes).
The only logical step is to make livestream mainstream on mobile and that is what YouTube is trying to do here. YouTube is now rolling out the mobile livestreaming feature they announced in June last year to all creators who have more than 10,000 subscribers.
The feature has been baked into the YouTube mobile app. All you need to do to start a YouTube livestream is open the app, hit the capture button and you will go live.
Unlike most livestream services, the YouTube livestream will allow you to earn money from it. The company also launched Super Chat, a livestream monetization tool that is available to creators from more than 20 countries (Kenya is not in the list sadly).
The audience will be able to buy Super Chats which are highlighted messages that stand out from the chat stream. They can be pinned on top of the chat for upto 5 hours and will allow creators to earn money on the side.
For those people with channels with less than 10,000 followers, YouTube says that they will have the mobile live streaming feature soon. Well, YouTube has decided to properly counter Instagram Live, Facebook Live and Twitter’s Periscope and we have to see how that will pan out in the future.
