YouTube replaces Fan Funding with Super Chat

While Facebook is scrambling to get more video content creators onto their platform, YouTube has taken another step towards cementing their dominance by announcing Super Chat, a monetization tool powered by fans, not brands.

Enthusiastic and particularly giving fans can pay to grab the attention of their favourite content creators during a Live broadcast with Super Chat. Rolling out the Beta today in partnership with a select number of content creators such as iHasCupquake, Great Library (buzzbean11) and Alex Wassabi, with plans of a broader release being expressed for 31st January, 2017.

Super Chats will be available for content creators in more than 20 countries around the world, and for viewers in 40 countries, although any plans to eventually increase this number have not been expressed by YouTube yet.

With Super Chat, fans who tune in to a Live video broadcast on YouTube can pay for the privilege of having their comments stand out from that of other users. YouTube will highlight the comment, so if you have a question, comment or compliment or what have you, and cannot bear the thought of it ending up unnoticed, you can pay for the attention of the broadcaster.

Not only that, unlike other comments, Super Chat gives your comment a shelf life of 5 hours by pinning it on the top of the chat along with other Super Chats, so you can enjoy the attention for a while longer.

And the birth of Super Chat, comes at the cost of Fan Funding’s demise. If you are not familiar with Fan Funding, it allowed fans to make donations or ‘Support’ the content creators on YouTube who had enabled a ‘Support’ button, enabled on their profile. The service was introduced in 2014, and is now being discontinued with Super Chat enabling a new form of payment from fans to creators.

Fan Funding will stop accepting new sign ups from today, and offering Support on channels which have enabled it will cease from February 28.

YouTube Product Manager, Barbara McDonald signed off, “We are super (get it ;) excited to see how our new creator funding tool keeps the conversation going.”

Well Barbara, so are we!