In a recent community post (via the edge), YouTube announced that it will launch its own custom emotes, called YouTube emotes, thus giving its users a new way to interact with their favorite creators.
Users can access these emotes on YouTube in the comment sections and during live chats, although the platform previously allowed individual streamers to offer their own reactions and emotes. YouTube currently 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 started with emotes made for games, but we’re working to bring even more emote themes in the future, so keep an eye out for emotes for even more communities!” says YouTube in a community post.
According to YouTube, using a smiley is the same as using an emoji. Users can access the available YouTube Emoticons by clicking the emoji icon in live chats or comments. Additionally, some YouTube emoticons also have specific names, which users can type to auto-complete in live chats for faster access. For example, a user can type “:orange-cat-whistling:” in live chats while watching a stream, and YouTube will populate a comment with a hissing orange cat.
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 hiring well-known streamers like Ludwig and Valkyrae.
The main reason streamers sign up with YouTube is the financial security that YouTube offers. So by paying their streamers a certain amount of money to be exclusively on their platform, streamers don’t have to worry about how many donations or subscriptions they earned in a month. The other reason is how Amazon has treated its content creators. In the past, creators have been upset by what they see as unfair bans from Twitch, feeling the platform isn’t listening to their advice.
