YouTube Makes Q&A Sessions Easier For Creators & Viewers With A New Live Q&A Feature

Source: YouTube

YouTube introduced Live Q&A, a new feature for live streams and Premieres.

How Live Q&A Works

To get started, creators tap a Start A Q&A button and type in a prompt for their viewers. The prompt will become a pinned chat, which viewers can use to submit their questions. As questions are submitted, creators can view them in chronological order. When creators select questions to answer, they become a pinned chat and are highlighted to viewers. Creators can also report questions that they deem inappropriate.

Plus, they can switch between other chat settings like Top Chat and Live Chat. The former filters out potential spam to make the chat easier to read, while the former is an unfiltered view of the chat.

Seamless Q&A Management

Live Q&A empowers creators to engage with their audience in real-time. Through Q&A, creators can provide value by answering questions directly from their viewers.

Q&As aren't new, YouTubers have been doing them for years. However, it was often a challenging experience for creators and viewers. Creators would have to keep track of questions as they flood the chat, and viewers that joined in the middle of a live stream often wouldn’t know what questions a creator would be answering. Native support for organizing questions makes it easier for creators to seamlessly manage fan Q&As and leverage them to build connections and community.

More Support For Live Streaming

Along with Polls, YouTube's Live Q&A feature adds another way for creators to make their live streams more interactive and engaging. It also follows the release of co-streaming feature, Go Live Together.

YouTube is playing a bit of catch-up with competitors like Twitch and TikTok, which already support co-streaming and Q&A. YouTube should continue to be aggressive with new features for live video, particularly around shopping.