In a recent community post (via The Verge), YouTube announced that it’s rolling out its own custom emotes, called YouTube emotes, thus giving its users a new way of interacting with their favorite creators.
Users can access these emotes across YouTube in comment sections and during live chats, though the platform previously allowed individual streamers to offer their own reactions and emotes. Currently, YouTube offers a set of gaming emotes designed by Abelle Hayford, Guy Field, and Yujin Won, with plans to introduce more emotes based on new themes.
“We’re starting with emotes created for Gaming but are working on bringing even more themes of emotes in the future, so stay tuned for emotes for even more communities!” says YouTube in a community post.
According to YouTube, using an emote is the same as using an emoji. Users can access the available YouTube Emotes by clicking on the emoji icon in live chats or comments. Further, some YouTube emotes also have specific names, which users can type to autocomplete in live chats for quicker access. For example, a user can type “:cat-orange-whistling:” in live chats while viewing a stream, and YouTube will fill a comment with an orange cat whistling.
YouTube wants to compete with Twitch
Twitch has been the number one live-streaming platform since its launch in June 2011. However, YouTube has become the Amazon-owned platform’s biggest rival in recent years by signing well-known streamers such as Ludwig and Valkyrae.
The biggest reason behind streamers signing with YouTube is the financial security that YouTube provides. Thus, by paying its streamers a certain amount of money to be on its platform exclusively, streamers don’t have to worry about how many donations or subs they earned in a month. The other reason is how Amazon has treated its content creators. In the past, creators have been upset at what they deem to be unfair Twitch bans, feeling like the platform wasn’t listening to their advice.