YouTube 'encourages' user engagement with new live features

Youtube is introducing more ways to watch live videos and interact with the live community in real time in their latest update.

Live chat plays a key role in creating connections between creators and their community.

Now they are starting to roll out chat replay to YouTube, so users can follow the conversation even after a live stream is over.

Live chat replays will show up alongside the video, exactly as it appeared live.

Youtube launched automatic captions back in 2009, and since then, they've auto-captioned a staggering 1 billion videos.

They are now bringing English automatic captions to live streams.

When professionally provided captions aren't available, the new live automatic captions provide creators with a quick and inexpensive way to make live streams accessible to more people.

With their live automatic speech recognition (LASR) technology, users will get captions with error rates and latency approaching industry standards.

They'll roll this out in the coming weeks, and will continue to improve accuracy and latency of automatic captions.

Creators can now add a location tag to their mobile live streams and video uploads and share all their favourite hot spots with viewers.

Viewers can explore other videos with the same location tag by simply clicking on it.

They can also use the location filter on the search results page to find other videos from a specific spot.

Last year, Youtube introduced a way for Super Chats to trigger real-life events.

Now creators can set this up for their channels using IFTTT (If This, Then That).

Over 600 internet-connected services and devices (like lights, pet feeders and confetti cannons!) can be connected to Super Chat.

Super Chat is already available on desktop and Android devices, with support for iOS devices rolling out starting today.