YouTube Launches New Communities Experience

YouTube is launching today a new Communities experience to give content creators and their audience a dedicated space to interact outside of the comments section. This new space that YouTube creators can enable on their channel builds on the existing (and optional) Community tab that allows creators to post messages, pictures, polls, and more to create conversations with their fans.

YouTube Communities were announced alongside other new YouTube features at Google’s Made on YouTube annual event in New York. The YouTube team said that it created this new Communities experience by discussing with content creators who wanted better ways to engage with the audience they built on YouTube.

“We started building Communities with a small, varied set of channels, and many early communities are already thriving,” said Whitney Taylor, Head of Design, YouTube Community. “We’re already seeing fans spark conversations, share personal stories, and engage directly with each other and the creator.”

YouTube is currently testing its new Communities experience on mobile with a small subset of channels. Both creators and their followers can start discussions on a dedicated space and comment on others’ posts. As of today, only people who subscribe to a YouTube channel can post on YouTube Communities, with content creators remaining in control of who can participate in conversations.

In parallel with the launch of this new YouTube Communities experience, the YouTube team is also launching a new Community Hub in YouTube Studio, the hub where content creators can manage their channel and edit their videos. With this new Community Hub, YouTube creators will get new tools to interact with their community, including a Community spotlight and AI-enhanced reply suggestions.

If you spend time on YouTube, you probably know that YouTube’s comment section is usually… not the best place to have constructive conversations. If YouTube Communities aim to create a dedicated space for more insightful interactions, content creators may still prefer to stick with better community-building tools such as Discord servers.